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Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
Previous publications by the same author
Late Modernity, Individualization and Socialism: An Associational Critique of Neoliberalism
(2013, Palgrave Macmillan)
Stretching the Sociological Imagination: Essays in Honour of John Eldridge
(co-edited with Bridget Fowler, David Miller and Andrew Smith, 2015, Palgrave Macmillan)
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Social Theory for
Alternative Societies
Matt Dawson
© Matt Dawson 2016
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2016 by
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contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
v
vi Contents
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Contents vii
Bibliography 206
Index 227
acknowledgements
one argument made in this book is that social theorists develop ideas for alter-
native societies based upon the circumstances they find themselves in. The same
is true of someone who decides to write a book like this; the decision to do so
will inevitably be influenced by the circumstances in which i live and the people
around me. consequently, the acknowledgements page is an important part of
such a book by recognising all the influences which allowed this book to be
written.
The first, and biggest, thanks goes to the honours students who took my
‘Sociological alternatives: Ways to change the World’ course at the University
of Glasgow in 2013 and 2015. The idea for this book actually began as the idea
for that course. inevitably, when developing such a course, there’s a bit of fear
that you’re actually the only one who cares and that students will find all this
material, which you care about so deeply, dull. Thankfully, both classes were
exactly the opposite. in your enthusiasm for the topic, criticisms and compli-
ments of the theorists we discussed and truly impressive essays you reassured
me that actually i wasn’t the only one who cared and that there was something
to this sociological alternatives topic. i consider myself immensely lucky to
have had such sharp students on the course to date and have no doubt those
to come will be equally so. i hope anyone reading this book finds the topic as
interesting as you all seemed to.
My next set of thanks goes to those who have read sections of this manu-
script, provided comments and, perhaps more important, assured me that i
was on the right track. especial thanks here to charlie Masquelier and luke
Martell who read all, or almost all, the manuscript and provided really valu-
able comments and further readings. others who have been kind enough to
cast their eye over material include emma Jackson, roona Simpson and Sarah
Burton. i’m really grateful to all of you for that.
in many ways writing a book which traces a history of social theory is an
arrogant act. after all, these theorists could, and do, have whole volumes
devoted to their work. Therefore, a book like this requires lots of reading from
the author and, in doing so, you can’t help but recognise that you’re fulfilling
the old adage of standing on the shoulders of giants. as the author of this book
i owe a great deal to the authors cited here who have devoted their time to dis-
cussion of these theorists, filling out the details of intellectual history we all so
dearly rely on. This is academic labour which in times of ‘impact’ is increasingly
hard to justify to the powers that be. We should continue to justify it since any
discipline which loses such contributions is inevitably poorer.
Material from the G.D.h. cole archives quoted in the introduction is repro-
duced with the kind permission of the Warden and fellows of nuffield college,
viii
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ACknowledgements ix
oxford. My thanks to the staff at nuffield college library for facilitating access
to the archive.
i also owe thanks to those at Palgrave for their assistance in preparing this
volume. anna reeve was important to this book being written as a result of her
enthusiasm for the project and encouragement to submit the initial proposal,
for which i am very grateful. lloyd langman and nicola cattini have then
been an excellent source of support and encouragement during the production
of the volume. This includes bearing with an event unknown to this point: an
academic missing a deadline. My thanks also to Palgrave’s reviewers who pro-
vided valuable comments which have improved this text.
finally, huge, huge thanks to the friends and family who supported (or, at
some points, simply put up with) me during writing this book. Some of them
have already been mentioned but i would like to thank my parents for their
continual support along with friends lucy, Susie and Kirsteen. Thank you all
so much.
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Introduction
The year is 1950. G.D.H. Cole, at this point holder of one of the few jobs in
the world dedicated to the research and teaching of social theory, the Chichele
Professorship of Social and Political Theory, is welcoming students to Oxford
and his course ‘Prolegomena to Social and Political Theory’. After expressing
his hopes that they find the course useful Cole begins to discuss the reasons
why they might be there. He acknowledges some may be taking the course
because they are required to for their degree, while others may simply be curi-
ous. Despite this, he detects another interest which has drawn students to his
lectures on this cold January morning: the desire to change the world. He there-
fore decides to devote his first lecture to the theme of ‘The Subject Matter of
Social Theory’ and argues that doing social theory inevitably leads to a desire
for social change since ‘no one who studies his [sic] own or a like society can
possibly help carrying his judgements with him into his work … This must be
so, because he is a citizen as well as a scientist’ (Cole 1950:9). Such problems
are, for Cole, especially pressing for the students in the room who will become
sociologists. It is perhaps easier to be objective as an outsider studying ‘other’
societies, but this is much more challenging for the sociologist studying their
own society. They will inevitably have preferences about what should be done;
after all, we cannot be entirely ‘disinterested’ when studying the things which
impact our everyday lives (Cole 1950:10).
So, Cole asks, is social theory doomed to be simply the reflection of right and
wrong, good and bad, held by an individual at a particular time? Cole strikes a
tone of pessimism and optimism for his students. He suggests ‘it is a vain hope
that we shall be able to keep our personal predilections, ideals and dislikes out
of our thinking’ yet also argues that studying social theory gives us certain tools
to think about good and bad. As he puts it:
It is in this spirit that Cole encourages his students not to ignore or expunge
their own personal values from their thinking but rather to keep ideas of the
‘good society’ (a later topic on the course) in their mind. Then, they should use
the tools of social theory to criticise these notions and assess whether their idea
of ‘good’ would be the same for all.
This book is written in the spirit of what Cole told his students on that
day in Oxford. In what follows I will present a history of social theory which
focuses on how theorists have attempted to come up with ideas for this ‘good’,
1
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inTroducTion 3
Sociological alternatives
When sociologists construct a vision of the good society, or when they suggest
changes to society as currently constituted, they are engaging in the construc-
tion of what I will term in this book ‘sociological alternatives’. These sociologi-
cal alternatives contain three parts:
It is important for all three of these elements to be present. Doing step 1 with-
out those that follow is to engage in ‘critical sociology’, condemning society
without the idea of an alternative. Furthermore, offering an alternative without
a critique is, as we shall see in Chapter 3, what Marx and Engels criticised
‘utopian socialists’ for: to assume you can start with a blank slate. Finally, if a
justification is not offered it is hard to understand the reasons why the alterna-
tive is more attractive than what we have at the moment.
Let’s take an example, in this case one from education. At this point we
have ample evidence that a privileged class background gives some students
an advantage through their holding of cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron
1977, Sullivan 2001). Therefore, my critique could be that this leaves those
lacking such an advantage ‘playing catch-up’ to their more privileged peers
upon entering school. This reproduces privileged and disadvantaged classes.
I can then offer a variety of ideas for how to lessen such an advantage. For exam-
ple, I could say children from less advantaged backgrounds should get extra
tuition outside of school hours to assist their education. The justification for
this may be that while it will not remove the inequalities present when students
enter the education system it will help to eradicate some advantages gained due
to background. This may have the added benefit of reducing disadvantage for
4 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
these children later in life by narrowing the gap in educational achievement due
to class background. Consequently, while this initially seems quite a small-scale
policy it actually has a wider social value; it ensures we move closer to a more
equal society. Therefore, extra tuition could be said to be a useful instrument of
social mobility and consequently a well-justified sociological alternative.
At this point the reader may wish to critique this alternative; it may be said
that inequalities of class are too extreme to be overcome solely by private tui-
tion. Alternatively, it could be said that the issue with such a policy is that
tutors are likely to be from a privileged class themselves and therefore will
favour, and reproduce, those qualities in their students. Finally, we may ques-
tion the practicalities of deciding who these ‘disadvantaged’ children deserving
of extra tuition are. Indeed, some of these issues are common to recent educa-
tional reforms which purport to overcome inequalities of class (Gillies 2005).
However, while we may not be convinced of the value of this alternative, it
does demonstrate how alternatives emerge from sociological insight. Imagine
we didn’t know about the impacts of class inequalities on education. In this
case, my alternative would probably be different and I may argue that every
child should have extra tuition. After all, doesn’t every child have the right to
equal opportunities to achieve as much as they can in education? We might call
such an approach, which relies upon a moral precept rather than sociologi-
cal insight, a ‘philosophical alternative’ since it is based upon abstract moral
claims of what is right and wrong. It is only the sociological knowledge of
how inequalities are experienced and felt that allows this alternative to become
one about overcoming inequalities. Indeed, our philosophical alternative of
extra tuition for every child may make the problem worse by further entrench-
ing, and perhaps extending, the advantages of children from privileged back-
grounds. Therefore, a ‘sociological’ alternative is defined by having all three
of the above elements. Some alternatives may start from small-scale instances
such as the above or from a broader claim (as in the advocacy of some form of
socialism); however, all are united in imagining a new, better society.
When discussing the sociological alternatives offered in this book I will fol-
low this three-step process, first identifying the critique and then outlining the
alternative before finishing with the justification. As the book goes on we will
see that some sociologists offer a more extensive discussion of one or two of
these steps but not the others. For example, while Marx and Engels were quite
clear on steps 1 and 3, they were much more reticent on step 2. Alternatively,
while the feminist campaign to ban pornography was very strong on steps 1
and 2 it was less impressive on step 3. Moreover, we will see that the way soci-
ologists offer alternatives differs greatly. Durkheim and Mannheim produced
books and articles which provided quite detailed blueprints about what should
happen. Others, such as Mead, instead devoted their time to trying to construct
alternatives in the here and now. As I will highlight throughout the book, and
return to in the ‘Conclusion’, such differences do not automatically make any
one sociological alternative better or worse than others, but rather reflect dif-
fering ideas in the discipline about how sociologists should offer alternatives
and what sociology is for.
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inTroducTion 5
When Cole gave his students that advice about the purpose of social theory he
was well aware that his view was not shared by all (Cole 1957). Indeed, when
Cole constructed a sociological alternative in his conception of Guild Socialism
(Cole 1920) his idea of sociology alienated him from many sociologists of his
era (Dawson and Masquelier 2015). Chapter 1 will therefore begin with the
question of whether sociologists should offer alternatives by tracing the debate
on value-freedom from its initial propagation by Max Weber up to the current
day. While this is hardly a settled debate, we will see that many have ques-
tioned Weber’s key claims about the possibility (or desirability) of a value-free
sociology. This is then reflected in Chapters 2–8 which are devoted to outlin-
ing the sociological alternatives offered by a variety of theorists. Chapters 2–4
are devoted to classical writers (Marx and Engels, Durkheim and Du Bois)
while Chapters 5–8 are devoted to two or more thinkers who are linked by a
common theme of their alternative (democracy, neo-Marxism, feminism and
cosmopolitanism). Each of these chapters follows the threefold model of socio-
logical alternatives outlined above. Chapters 9 and 10 are then focused on
questions of how sociologists should go about offering alternatives through
the two themes of utopianism and public sociology. Since these chapters aren’t
concerned with outlining alternatives but rather the means by which they can
be offered, they will not follow the threefold model. The ‘Conclusion’ then
summarises the debates outlined in the book and returns to the story of socio-
logical alternatives.
Any book such as this which is devoted to the study of particular theorists
or schools is inevitably limited in its scope and therefore must be selective in
the writings it covers. Consequently, there are usually particular omissions or
overemphasis in the positions and theorists represented. This is the case with
this book. The theorists and schools discussed here have been chosen for par-
ticular reasons. I discuss such reasons in each chapter; however, they can be
summarised here under four categories.
Firstly, in Chapters 2–4 I chose Marx and Engels, Durkheim and Du Bois
since they are key classical writers. This indicates that some attempt to develop
alternatives was a significant occupation during sociology’s formative years. It
was partly such tendencies which, as we shall see in Chapter 1, writers such
as Weber contested in their hope to form sociology on a value-free basis and
which led to a wider quest to separate out ‘scientific sociology’ from ‘social
reform’ (Deegan 2006, Rocquin 2014).
Secondly, for Chapters 5–8, in order to indicate the various areas in which
subsequent social theorists have been active I have taken a different approach.
While, as mentioned above, there are some ‘key’ writers covered in these
chapters I have attempted to choose cases which complement each other and
provide different perspectives across the book. These differ not just on the form
of alternatives but also on the role of intellectuals. For example, in Chapter 5
it would have been possible to draw upon writers other than Mead and
Mannheim to discuss democracy. But these two cases serve as ideal types of
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Should Sociologists Offer
Alternatives? Value-Free and
Critical Sociologies 1
This book concerns ideas for alternatives offered by social theory – as I have
termed them, sociological alternatives. Such a topic leads to an obvious initial
question: should sociologists even offer alternatives? This will be discussed in
this opening chapter.
Of course, the very fact that this book continues beyond this chapter sug-
gests that sociologists have offered alternatives. However, as we shall see, while
doing so some have been restrained by the possibilities they felt were available
to intellectuals (as for Marx and the Marxists who followed) whereas oth-
ers have fully embraced the supposed potential for sociology to provide clear
guidelines for an alternative society (for example, Durkheim and Mannheim).
Therefore, this question will remain with us throughout the text.
Before that, this chapter traces a history of some of the key debates con-
cerning ‘value-free’ and ‘critical’ sociology; these hold differing views on the
role of sociologists in offering alternatives. This will begin with the writings
of Max Weber, which advocated a divide between empirically testable ‘facts’
and individually decided ‘values’. Then, we will turn to the ‘Becker/Gouldner
debate’. Both writers diverged from Weber’s distinction but had a disagreement
on whether sociologists should be on the side of the underdog or of values.
Then, we will discuss the position of Dorothy Smith, which critiques the truth
claims of mainstream sociology. Finally, this chapter will discuss what it means
to do ‘critical’ sociology, most notably, Bauman’s advocacy for sociology as a
‘science of freedom’. First, we need to consider what it means to be ‘normative’.
We are all normative beings. We continually make statements about what we,
others or indeed society as a whole ‘should’ do. In doing so we may draw upon
moral guidelines (as in the claim ‘this isn’t fair’) or social rules themselves (if
someone sends you a gift you should send them a thank you note). Sociologists
are of course interested in these normativities. They seek to understand how
we come to develop our beliefs and ‘why things matter to people’ (Sayer 2011).
But is it correct for sociology itself to make such normative statements?
Sociology, as a field of knowledge and programme of research, could be seen
as defined more by statements about what ‘is’ or ‘has been’ rather than what
‘should be’. Indeed, if we return to our dictionary of sociology we find that the
entry for normative theory continues to say:
As we shall see, many social theorists have in fact rejected such a position. Nev-
ertheless, the claim of our sociology dictionary does emerge from a key writer
in the discipline: Max Weber (1864–1920).
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Should SociologiSTS offer alTernaTiveS? 9
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Should SociologiSTS offer alTernaTiveS? 11
Therefore, sticking with our example, once we decide economic growth is our
measure then the socialist and capitalist researcher should come to the same
conclusion. But it is likely given their contrasting values that our researchers
may have chosen different methods for investigation.
Consequently, when values influence not just our topic but how we research
this it puts an additional demand on the researcher to be aware of their impact;
to use contemporary parlance, we must be reflexive. Weber suggests that at
the bare minimum, if researchers do offer value-judgements they must make
very clear that they are value-judgements, beyond the reach of empirical claims
(Weber 1949b:110). Furthermore, when doing so, we should realise that for
most the value-judgement they reach is shaped ‘to a quite significant degree
by the degree of affinity between it and his class interests’ (Weber 1949b:56).
This was something Weber made clear in his own normative claims concerning
economic policy where he argued ‘I am a member of the bourgeois classes. I feel
myself to be a bourgeois, and I have been brought up to share their views and
ideals’ (Weber 1895:23).
Therefore, Weber does highlight the difficulties of obtaining value-freedom
and the role of values in the research process. What space does this leave for
sociologists to outline possible alternatives? Weber’s example here takes the
form of a thought exercise: imagine someone approached you as a sociologist
and asked ‘should I be a syndicalist?’. Syndicalism is a form of anarchist theory
which we could replace with ‘environmentalist’, ‘socialist’, ‘libertarian’, ‘femi-
nist’ and so on. In such a case Weber (1949a:18) argues you can respond with
three points:
In doing so, you may show that being a syndicalist is ‘useless’. The means of
creating such a society may be unavailable. Or it would be possible to create
such a society but the side effects of it (for example, loss of individual freedom)
would be worse than the problems now. Or the conflicting value-judgements
may be unanswerable (would they be willing to jail, or even kill, those who
disagree with their ideal society?). Nevertheless, while:
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Should SociologiSTS offer alTernaTiveS? 13
But what the present-day student should learn from his teachers above
all, at least in the lecture hall, is, first, to fulfil a given task in a workman-
like manner; secondly, definitely to recognise facts, even those may be
personally uncomfortable, and to distinguish them from his own evalu-
ations; and thirdly, to subordinate himself to the task and to repress the
impulse to exhibit his personal tastes or other sentiments unnecessarily.
(Weber 1949a:5)
Therefore, lecturers can speak their values in any forum available to all citizens,
but should not do so in their role as lecturers (Weber 1949a:5). Therefore,
alternatives are not the responsibility of sociologists as researchers or teachers,
though they will hold normative beliefs as citizens. This split in the ascribed
roles of sociologist and citizen is central to the Becker/Gouldner debate.
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Should SociologiSTS offer alTernaTiveS? 15
As this quote indicates, for Gouldner value-freedom was a ‘myth’ in both sense
of the term. It was a myth since it wasn’t possible beyond a very small selec-
tion of possible cases (if at all) but it was also mythical given that, despite this,
sociologists continued to believe in it. Indeed, a belief in value-freedom was one
of the things that made one a sociologist. Problematically, for Gouldner, those
who worshipped at the altar had not read the gospel; few had actually read
Weber’s work and in particular the careful and complicated lines which, as we
saw above, Weber drew between a value-laden citizen and a value-free sociolo-
gist. When we recognise those complex lines there are three criticisms we can
make of this myth for Gouldner.
Firstly, it is of its time and place. The Germany of the first decade of the twen-
tieth century was, as we saw, a highly politically charged and confrontational
arena. In any one academic meeting it may be possible to find anarchists, Marx-
ists, liberals, conservatives and nationalists. In that context any political debate
was largely impossible and Weber’s claim for value-freedom ‘was a proposal
for an academic truce. It said, in effect, if we all keep quiet about our political
views then we may all be able to get on with our work’ (Gouldner 1962:202).
This was especially notable in Weber’s views on teaching, where an attempt to
keep politics out of the classroom was encouraged by the fact that a lecturer’s
income, and potential for promotion, was linked directly to student numbers
in their lectures (Gouldner 1962:201). None of these conditions still hold for
Gouldner; not only are lecturers now promoted primarily on the basis of their
research but the universities of the early 1960s America, along with wider soci-
ety, were marked by their unpolitical nature. Therefore, instead of discouraging
political debate it may be better to encourage it and therefore extend the politi-
cal engagement and pluralism of society more broadly (Gouldner 1962:202).
Secondly, the distinction Weber makes between a value-heavy citizen and a
value-free sociologist is untenable. In making this distinction Weber is separating
the two traditions of reason and faith. For Gouldner, this allows Weber to have
his cake and eat it too since it means the reasonable, rational sociologist could, in
Weber’s case, praise the rationalisation of society while the romantic citizen with
faith could also condemn the disenchantment it created (Gouldner 1962:210).
Weber ‘wanted the play to be written by a classicist and to be acted by roman-
ticists’ (Gouldner 1962:211). Such a split is impossible for Gouldner since it
demands cutting our personality in two. It is also unstable since it robs knowledge
of its moral components and ‘leaves feeling smugly sure only of itself and bereft
of a sense of common humanity’ (Gouldner 1962:212). Amoral knowledge does
not relate to the types of lives we live; instead knowledge is always changed with
moral ideas. For example, our idea of what ‘poverty’ is will always be shaped by
moral ideas of the good life and, most likely, the (im)moral causes of such poverty.
Finally, the myth of value-freedom has been damaging for sociology. By argu-
ing sociology is purely a profession with no commitment to values it means
sociologists can sell their skills to the highest bidder. An example of this is
‘doing market research designed to sell more cigarettes, although well aware of
the implications of recent cancer research’ (Gouldner 1962:204). This was not
an unusual activity for sociologists (see Berger 2011:169–75).
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Should SociologiSTS offer alTernaTiveS? 17
him from doing things just as he likes. If we question the superiors of the
prison administrator, a state department of corrections or prisons, they
will complain of the governor and the legislature. And if we go to the gov-
ernor and the legislature, they will complain of lobbyists, party machines,
the public and the newspapers. There is no end to it and we can never have
a ‘balanced picture’ until we have studied all of society simultaneously.
I do not propose to hold my breath until that happy day. (Becker 1967:247)
Instead ‘the question is not whether we should take sides, since we inevitably
will, but rather whose side we are on’ (Becker 1967:239) which, for Becker,
should be the side of the underdog. While such one-sidedness is an inevitabil-
ity we should seek to ‘use our theoretical and technical resources to avoid the
distortions that might introduce into our work … and field as best we can
the accusations and doubts that will surely be our fate’ (Becker 1967:247). A
good example of such an approach can be found in Lumsden’s (2012) work
on ‘boy racers’ in Scotland. Lumsden found that through her work with this
group – who were largely condemned by others and dictated to by the police
trying to limit their driving – she increasingly sought to ‘take their side’ and put
their case forward in the public sphere (for example, via media appearances
to advocate their position). Therefore, being on the side of the underdog leads
sociologists to consider, and advocate, solutions for improving their situation.
In many ways, Becker’s position chimes with Gouldner’s; both, for slightly
different reasons, argue that value-freedom is an impossible position. However,
there is a key difference, picked up on by Gouldner (1968) in a response to
Becker. Whereas Gouldner argued sociologists should take the side of certain
values, Becker thought they should take the side of groups creating, as Gould-
ner puts it, a ‘sentiment-free social scientist’ (Gouldner 1968:105). The reason
for this takes us to Becker’s research which was part of ‘a school of thought that
finds itself at home in the world of hip, drug addicts, jazz musicians, cab driv-
ers, prostitutes, night people, drifters, grifters and skidders: the “cool world”’
(Gouldner 1968:104). This desire to be with the cool world meant that Becker
sided with certain underdogs against certain authority figures: the underdogs
were the drug takers, the authority figures were the ‘squares’. To be exact, the
squares were the police who take the cool people’s drugs or the managers who
fired them. Often, the squares in such scenarios are not those with true power
but rather middle managers and administrators – not as much ‘top dogs’ as
‘middle dogs’. This meant that:
Therefore, while Becker’s approach may solve the problems of the split between
the sociologist and citizen it does not solve the problem of turning sociology
into a profession and putting its services up for sale. The emergence of the
welfare state and the identification of sociologists with the left-of-centre par-
ties which advocated this – the Democrats in the US, the Labour Party in the
UK and so on – meant that Becker’s focus on the under/middle dog dynamic
allowed him to not take sides in the larger issues – the conflict between gov-
ernment and people, or capital and worker – which Gouldner saw as truly
important. Instead, Becker’s position allows sociologists to go to the true top
dog, welfare state governments, and ask for funding to research the relation of
under and middle dogs. Consequently it ‘is the sociology of young men with
friends in Washington’ (Gouldner 1968:110). In opposition to Becker, Gould-
ner argues that ‘it is to values, not factions, that sociologists must give their
most basic commitment’; these values should be the recognition and intoler-
ance of suffering (Gouldner 1968:116).
Therefore, the Becker/Gouldner debate has highlighted that if we do not
accept the position of Weber on value-freedom, this is only the beginning of a
wider conversation. This concerns not just the position of values in sociology
but also the position of sociology in relation to other groups, such as under-
dogs and governments. Their debate opens up a key divide in what alternatives
are for. From Becker’s position we could say alternatives are for groups to
lessen the problems confronted by the underdogs. For Gouldner, alternatives
are focused on furthering certain values, such as lessening suffering. Similar
debates continued in later years.
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Should SociologiSTS offer alTernaTiveS? 19
she advocates a ‘sociology for women’ – or, as she later put it, a ‘sociology for
people’ (Smith 2005) – which starts from those particular experiences and eve-
ryday encounters which shape our knowledge and activity in the world (Smith
1987). This is a ‘standpoint’ theory in the sense that it seeks to see the world
from a particular position (that of everyday women) and uses it to allow the
‘absent experience … to be filled with the presence and spoken experience of
actual women’ (Smith 1987:107).
Standpoint theories opened up a cleavage within feminism to the extent that
they could be said to operate as ‘successor sciences’ (Stanley and Wise 1990).
Some, such as Sandra Harding, have argued that standpoint theory produces
truer scientific knowledge since the oppressed see both their own experience
and that of the dominant, whereas the dominant only know their own expe-
rience. Therefore, it is truly universal (Harding 1987). However, as Stanley
and Wise (1990:29–36) note, this relies upon a universal ‘female’ standpoint
which isn’t true given the various inequalities between women, a position Smith
(1987:106–7) also holds. Therefore, Smith’s version of standpoint theory does
not imagine a privileged position for universal female experience and is less
likely to claim successor science status. A similar claim is found in Haraway’s
(2004:87) suggestion that ‘feminist objectivity’ is defined by the ‘limited loca-
tion and situated knowledge’ of intellectual claims, rather than the ‘god-trick’
of false universalism. This position advocates the extension of everyday forms
of knowledge with an ‘intersectional’ awareness of how people may occupy
many different social positions. This has been advocated most notably by black
feminists who highlight that some feminist standpoints are actually those of
white women (Crenshaw 1991, Collins 2000).
What do such discussions mean for value-freedom and sociological alterna-
tives? They make three claims. Firstly, as we have seen, pre-existing definitions
of value-freedom can only claim such status by marginalising particular experi-
ences and claiming one view of the world as a universal fact. In this case, the
values of the male world are presented as such facts. Secondly, in doing so such
a sociology can be complicit in maintaining, and even extending, ruling insti-
tutions (similar to Gouldner’s claim). And finally, we should be careful about
claiming any kind of universal experience of a social world which is highly
unequal and differentiated. Consequently, alternatives should be aware of these
diverse subjectivities and not seek to universalise the experience of one group.
Therefore, not only were the writings of Smith and others critical of claims for
value-freedom, they also indicate a shift towards the idea of ‘critical sociology’.
Critical sociology
The idea of sociology being ‘critical’ has now become ubiquitous; indeed,
whereas Gouldner claimed a belief in value-freedom made you a sociologist, it
could now be said a belief in being critical makes you a sociologist. To speak
of a sociologist’s work as ‘uncritical’ is ‘a criticism verging on the insulting’
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Saves the individual from the torments of indecision and the responsibil-
ity he is too weak to bear, by sharply cutting down the range of acceptable
options to the size of his ‘real’ potential. The price it pays, however, for
playing such a benign and charitable role is its essentially conservative
impact upon the society it helps people to explain and understand.
(Bauman 1976a:35)
22 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
Such an approach Bauman terms ‘the science of unfreedom’. Here the goal is
to lessen the scope of human freedom, for either paternalistic or authoritarian
ends (Bauman 1976a:27–42). This highlights ‘the intrinsically conservative role
of sociology’ found within its potential as the science of unfreedom (Bauman
1976a:36).
In opposition to such an approach Bauman advocates a ‘science of freedom’.
This seeks not only to highlight the limits to freedom but to transcend them,
meaning that ‘its struggle is not with commonsense, but with the practice, called
social reality, which underlies it’ (Bauman 1976a:75). Consequently:
Conclusion
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Should SociologiSTS offer alTernaTiveS? 23
concerns were expanded upon by Smith, who highlighted not only the link
between sociology and the relations of ruling but how these relied upon the
universalisation of a male viewpoint at the expense of female subjectivities. In
comparison to such a perspective, the idea of sociology as ‘critical’ has emerged
in recent decades. But, as Bauman noted, this is not an intrinsic good; instead
we have a choice between the science of freedom or unfreedom.
So, to return to the question which began this chapter: should sociologists
offer alternatives? The answer, from the debates we have discussed in this chap-
ter, ultimately relies upon a value-judgement: what is it that we wish sociology
to be? If the goal is to imagine a science based upon the values of universalism
(Merton 1973) then alternatives, as value-judgements, should be avoided or, at
the very least, kept to a minimum and clearly highlighted as value-judgements.
This does not mean we as individuals will not have values rather that these are
kept out of our professional sociological work. If we reject the possibility of
such a divide or, following Bauman, argue the question of a science of freedom
or unfreedom is inevitable, then alternatives become part of the sociological
project. As we shall see, for a variety of reasons, the social theorists covered in
this book have shared this point of view and, in different ways, have argued
that sociologists should offer alternatives.
Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels: ‘Recipes for the
Cook-Shops of the Future’ 2
Given the topic of this book it would seem Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich
Engels (1820–95) were obvious inclusions; after all, it is difficult to think
of any theorists more readily associated with an alternative than Marx and
Engels are with communism. This is also significant given the large number
of communist states which, proclaiming themselves as ‘Marxist’, emerged in
the twentieth century. Therefore, there is particular value in discussing Marx
and Engels as an example of a ‘successful’ sociological alternative, if we define
success as influence in creative alternative societies. However, here we face a
contradiction since although Marx and Engels are associated with communism
they actually wrote very little about it. The title of this chapter comes from a
claim of Marx, offered in the afterword to the second German edition of Das
Kapital, that he would limit himself ‘to the mere critical analysis of actual facts,
instead of writing recipes for the cook-shops of the future’ (Marx 1996a:17,
Wyatt 2006). As we shall see, Marx and Engels offered multiple justifications
for this reticence, the main one being that the construction of communism was
the job of the revolutionary working class, not intellectuals. As Marx put it,
the working class:
have no ideas to realise, but to set free the elements of the new society
with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In the full
consciousness of their historic mission, and with the heroic resolve to act
upon it, the working class can afford to smile at the coarse invective of
the gentlemen’s gentlemen with the pen and inkhorn, and at the didac-
tic patronage of well-wishing bourgeois-doctrinaires, pouring forth their
ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in the oracular tone of scien-
tific infallibility. (Marx 1996b:188)
Yet it is worthwhile revisiting Marx and Engels’ writings since, as the above
quote demonstrates, they argued the new society would be an attempt to set
free the emancipatory potential within capitalist society. Indeed, it was the fact
that trends in capitalism pointed towards communism, as well as the need for
immediate political strategy, which meant Marx and Engels were more forth-
coming about communism than the above comments suggest. For some writers,
these ideas indicate the differences between communism as imagined by Marx
and Engels and the communist states which formed in the twentieth century
(Bauman 1976b:101).
24
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 25
Given the fame of Marx as a theorist of class the initial temptation may be to
assume his and Engels’ critique is one focused on inequality; this is not the case.
While class is central to the critique of capitalism the inequality it produces was
not its main fault. Marx was appalled by the poverty he saw as a young man
in Germany and later in London (Lubasz 1976) and Engels produced a master-
piece of social history with his survey of 1840s Manchester in The Condition
of the Working Class in England (Engels 1958). Nevertheless, we will find a
stronger condemnation of inequality when we turn to the work of Durkheim
in the next chapter.
Instead, it is useful to think of Marx and Engels’ critique of capitalism as
having three key components: alienation, exploitation and wastefulness. While
the first two are broadly critiques of the lived experience of capitalism the final
one is more of a structural critique. The three combined suggest the inevitable
failure of capitalism, forming ‘the long-term non-sustainability of capitalism
thesis’ (Wright 2010:90) where capitalism’s internal laws mean it produces the
conditions for its revolutionary overthrow. This then opens the way for the
transformation of society to Marx and Engels’ alternative: communism. As
The Communist Manifesto puts it, ‘the theory of the Communists may be
summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property’ (Marx and
Engels 1992:18). We should understand private property here as the ownership
by an individual, or groups of individuals, of what Marx terms the ‘means of pro-
duction’ or ‘material productive forces of society’ (Marx 1992c:425), that is, the
things used to produce the goods we consume. This would include factories and
machinery up to office buildings, computers and raw materials. Capitalism as
an economic system relies upon these being privately owned. Since, for Marx,
‘changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation
of the whole immense superstructure’ (Marx 1992c:426) changing the way in
which the means of production are used away from a capitalist system will
change the rest of society. It is this which makes Marx a ‘materialist’ since he
believes that the shape of society is not primarily determined by laws, politics
or ideas but rather originates from the material conditions (Marx 1992c:425).
A capitalist system, based upon private property, will produce a capitalist soci-
ety. Consequently removing private property, and thereby replacing capitalism
with communism, will make a communist society.
26 social Theory For alTernaTive socieTies
Alienation
The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in
his animal functions – eating, drinking and procreating, or at most in his
dwelling and adornment – while in his human functions he is nothing
more than an animal. (Marx 1992a:327)
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 27
Exploitation
I must also produce profit for the capitalist employing me. Marx (1976:340)
outlines the working day as such:
A------------------------B---------------------C
The point between A and B is the time in which I produce my £50 worth of
value, and the point from B to C is when I am producing more value than my
wage. I am, in effect, working for free in order to produce profit and wealth
for a capitalist; it is ‘unpaid labour’ (Marx 1976:713). This unpaid labour,
the point between B and C, is what Marx calls ‘surplus value’ which is the
‘increment or excess’ beyond which the capitalist has invested, in this case, by
paying wages (Marx 1976:215).
Capitalism is a system based upon extracting as much surplus value, and
thereby as much profit, as possible. This is done by pushing down wages to the
lowest possible level and finding ways, either through pressure upon workers
or greater use of machines, to increase the space between B and C representing
surplus value; in contemporary parlance, there is pressure on the workers ‘to do
more for less’. The result is that capitalism is a:
Another way for capital to increase the amount of surplus value is to expand
globally. Globalization was an inevitable result of capitalism since ‘the need
of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over
the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connections everywhere’ (Marx and Engels 1992:6). Globalization
increases the number of workers producing surplus value and buyers of the
products they produce. It also has the added advantage of pushing down wages
in rich countries to compete with lower paid workers abroad (Marx 1976:749).
But here we encounter a problem: production in capitalism is done without
reference to immediate need and, since it is in the individual interest of each
capitalist to expand and produce as much as possible, every capitalist will pro-
duce as much as possible; we get what Marx terms ‘production for production’s
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 29
sake’ (Marx 1976:1037). Left unchecked this inevitably creates a crisis since
goods are produced without any immediate buyer, meaning:
No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the mar-
ket, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his indi-
vidual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to
make good his costs of production or even to sell his commodity at all.
Anarchy reigns in socialized production. (Engels 1984:136)
The revolution
As we have seen, capitalism needs workers, indeed Marx argues that capital-
ism ‘creates’ workers by making individuals dependent on waged labour. But
in creating this group it produces the contradiction between social production
and private appropriation; this has ‘manifested itself as the antagonism of pro-
letariat and bourgeoisie’ (Engels 1984:136). As we have seen, these groups have
opposed interests under capitalism, occasionally conflicts break out and:
the workers begin to form combinations against the bourgeois; they club
together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent
associations in order to make provision beforehand for those occasional
revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots. Now and then
the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their bat-
tles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of
the workers. (Marx and Engels 1992:12)
30 social Theory For alTernaTive socieTies
For Marx and Engels, real change in alienation and exploitation is impossible
under capitalism; the system relies upon both as integral parts of its make-up.
Therefore, the only way to remove these symptoms of capitalism is to attack
the cause and overthrow it. Here the proletariat assume the role of what Marx
terms a ‘universal class’ – so called since ‘in their emancipation is contained uni-
versal human emancipation’ (1992a:333). Capitalism ‘creates its own grave-
diggers’ (Marx and Engels 1992:16). It creates a group of workers who share
exploitation and alienation, expands their number, places them in close living
quarters in cities and workplaces and gives them some education. In doing so
capitalism generates the intellectual, environmental and political conditions for
its eventual overthrow since ultimately the proletariat will realise their shared
fate as the universal class.
This of course leaves the question of when and how this revolution will
occur. The question of ‘when’ will be discussed in the next section. How this
revolution will occur is, however, relatively clear in their work. The eventual
revolution of the proletariat is one of praxis, a revolution in the way people
conceive of their actions. In the case of the proletariat this requires a shift in
class formation from, to use the Marxist terms, a class ‘in itself’ (a class of
people which objectively exists) to a class ‘for itself’ (a class which not only
objectively exists but is made up of individuals who act in the shared subjec-
tive interests of their class). While this is likely to occur as a result of increased
knowledge amongst the working class – and the pressures of the increased
deprivation of capitalism – communist parties, such as those Marx and Engels
were involved in, have a part to play since they:
are on the one hand, practically, the most resolute section of the working-
class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all oth-
ers; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the
proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the
conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
(Marx and Engels 1992:17)
We have seen that Marx and Engels’ critique of capitalism leads to the sug-
gestion of its eventual revolutionary overthrow. However, at this point we
return to the start of the chapter, namely that Marx and Engels were not will-
ing to provide a detailed guideline as to when this would happen, or what
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 31
In England, for instance, the way to show political power lies open to the
working class. Insurrection would be madness where peaceful agitation
would more swiftly and surely do the work. In France a hundred laws of
repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate
the violent solution of social war. (Marx and Landor 1962:130)
Therefore, in a country like England communism may be achievable via the bal-
lot box. As the working class gain the vote a peaceful election of communism
is conceivable, whereas in France, as the Paris Commune (see below) showed,
violence will probably be necessary. Given these varying trajectories any blue-
print would seem useless, the birth and development of communism in the UK
and France would be so divergent and the relations of those living under it so
different that to provide a universal blueprint would be folly.
Consequently, Marx and Engels suggest that ‘communism is for us not a
state of affairs which is to be established … We call communism the real
movement which abolishes the present state of things’ (Marx and Engels
1998:57). Since communism is a movement – as it was later called ‘the theory
of the process of liberation’ (Screpanti 2007:140, my emphasis) – it can in the
short term support a variety of other movements which ‘bring to the front,
as the leading question in each, the property question’ (Marx and Engels
1992:39) without being dictated to by what a final blueprint suggests must
be achieved.
Furthermore, Marx and Engels present their form of communism as ‘scien-
tific’ since their conclusions, based upon the observable conditions and contra-
dictions of capitalism, are:
In short, Marx and Engels’ form of communism was based upon historical
developments which showed possibilities for transformation beyond capital-
ism. We have seen this in the critique of capitalism and its links to the even-
tual revolution. This then forms the basis of another reason for rejecting the
construction of a communist blueprint, found in Engels’ comparison of their
‘scientific’ with others, ‘utopian’ socialism (Engels 1984).
Marx and Engels were far from the first to conceive of, and advocate, social-
ism. Many writers in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century had already
done so, most notably the French philosophers Henri de Saint Simon (1760–
1825) and Charles Fourier (1772–1837) as well as the Welsh businessman-
turned-social reformer Robert Owen (1771–1858). Owen in particular had
achieved a certain level of fame not only for his writings (it was rumoured
even Napoleon, in exile on Elba, had managed to read, and comment upon,
his A New View of Society) but as a man of action. Owen developed his New
Lanark cotton mill in Scotland along humanitarian lines; formed new, but ulti-
mately doomed, cooperative settlements such as New Harmony in Indiana,
USA, and had a role in the London-based Trades Union. This final body in 1832
began the National Equitable Labour Exchange where workers could receive a
voucher for their labour to be exchanged in stores – similar to an idea of Marx
to be discussed below (for more details on Owen’s socialism, see Cole 1930).
Despite a grudging respect for such figures, especially Owen who he saw as
the father of social movements in the UK (Engels 1984:121), Engels was dis-
missive of their view of socialism for being ‘utopian’. To be exact, each started
not with the conditions of the society they confront but rather began by con-
structing the ‘ideal’ society, the blueprint of socialism. Once this ‘new and more
perfect system of social order’ was constructed by the utopian all that was
needed was to ‘impose this upon society … by propaganda and, whenever it
was possible, by the example of model experiments’ (Engels 1984:114). This
relies upon what Engels termed ‘the individual man of genius’, that is, a bril-
liant man, such as Owen, thinking up the idea of socialism (Engels 1984:112).
The individual man of genius comes to this realisation because of his brilliance
and imagination, ‘independent of time, space and of the historical development
of man’ (Engels 1984:122) not because of any study of the conditions of society
and its long-term trends. To use the language of this book, Engels is arguing the
socialisms of Owen et al. are not sociological but rather philosophical alterna-
tives. They do not have a sociological understanding nor a critique of capitalist
society such as that of Marx and Engels and, because of that, remain ‘pure
fantasies’ (Engels 1984:114).
This is not only an intellectual problem for Engels but one of the construc-
tion of socialism. Reliance on an individual man of genius inevitably means
placing a large amount of faith and power in that individual. Since St. Simon,
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 33
Fournier and Owen all disagreed on the nature of socialism, and since their
visions were based on imagination rather than science, their followers could
only trust their visionary and deride the vision of others. Marx had a simi-
lar view in his critique of anarchist thinkers who relied on blueprints (Avineri
1968:238–9).
So, as we have seen, Marx and Engels have clear justifications for their reluc-
tance to provide a clearly elaborated alternative. Yet it would be untrue to say
there was no suggestion of what communism would look like in their writings.
Indeed, as Ollman (1977) has argued, even if the details of communism are
sparse in Marx’s work the idea of it is omnipresent. In order to criticise pri-
vate property as alienating and exploitative one must be able to conceive of a
society without private property: a communist society. Therefore, although the
suggestions are sparse and perhaps less detailed than other theorists we will
encounter in this book there is enough for us to perceive a general idea of what
the communist alternative could look like, if not construct a blueprint. These
suggestions come in three forms in the writings of Marx and Engels: commu-
nist strategy, the pre-existing conditions for communism and reflections on the
Paris Commune.
Communist strategy
As we have seen Marx and Engels saw communism as a movement. While this
movement may not know its final destination, like any political group, it needs
some form of strategy for what it should be trying to achieve in the short term.
The Communist Manifesto, a book written not only to let others know what
communists stood for but also to let communists know, was the inevitable place
for this (Hobsbawm 1998). The strategy suggested here is ‘to raise the prole-
tariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle for democracy’ (Marx
and Engels 1992:25); elsewhere a similar thought is expressed as the need to
establish a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Marx 1978:127, 1996c:222). It
has often been commented that these phrases are somewhat vague. However,
as we have seen, Marx focused on the different ways of achieving proletariat
power in different situations, so in countries like the UK ‘winning the bat-
tle for democracy’ could conceivably mean having members of the proletariat
win the popular vote. Elsewhere it may mean large-scale agitation, violent or
not, for an extension of the franchise or a new regime in which working-class
power is more readily achievable. The dictatorship of the proletariat which
would then be established may sound authoritarian to modern ears but the
word ‘dictatorship’ did not have the same connotation in the time of Marx and
Engels but rather meant a short-lived government granted exceptional powers
by collective decision (Draper 1961:93). Therefore, communist strategy should
be to obtain power for the proletariat; this group, as the revolutionary class,
can then use this power to follow through on its historical mission (Marx and
Engels 1992:25).
34 social Theory For alTernaTive socieTies
The Manifesto then provides the following list of demands (Marx and Engels
1992:25–6):
This list has generated debate, focused upon whether or not it is communism.
Some, such as Ollman (1977:10), argue these demands constitute the ‘first stage’
of communism and are to be put in place once the proletariat has defeated the
bourgeoisie. Others, including Avineri (1968:204–8), argue that instead they are
the things the state does before communism and which provide the basis for
the ‘universal suffrage’ which Marx advocated. Universal suffrage here was more
sophisticated than its usual meaning of everyone having the vote and rather meant
abolishing ‘the distinction between state and civil society’ (Avineri 1968:204), by
extending political power, held by the proletariat, into more and more areas.
Given Marx and Engels’ lack of clarity about the list it is hard to know
whether Avineri or Ollman was ‘right’. However, Avineri seems to have the
stronger case. As he points out, a key demand, in fact the communist demand,
abolition of private property and the socialisation of the means of production,
is not listed here. There is the removal of property of land but not the things
used to produce (such as factories, machinery and so on). Indeed, the progres-
sive taxation provision seems to imply the continuation of a bourgeoisie class
who will be taxed. This can be explained by the fact it is the job of the revolu-
tionary proletariat, not Marx and Engels as intellectuals, to determine how and
when to appropriate the means of production once they have achieved political
power. Avineri also highlights that in many ways this list is un-radical, reflecting
changes which were occurring at the time (national banks and centralisation
of transport) and indeed many have been realised in capitalist societies (free
education and progressive taxation).
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 35
In an earlier quote we saw Marx argue that the proletariat hope ‘to set free the
elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself
is pregnant’. We have also seen that this idea of communism emerging from
capitalism was a key justification for Engels’ defence of Marxism as ‘scientific’
rather than ‘utopian’ socialism.
Consequently, it would seem possible to highlight what these pre-existing
conditions for communism are. This is exactly what Marx did in two pieces: the
already mentioned Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and The Critique
of the Gotha Programme. The latter text was especially important; written as
a detailed criticism of a draft plan of action for the German Social Democratic
Workers Party it is forceful in its view that:
Due to its parentage in capitalism Marx claims that communism would likely
have two phases. These have since become known as the difference between
socialism (first phase) and communism (second phase) although Marx never
uses these terms, referring to ‘crude communism’ and ‘communism’ in the Man-
uscripts and the ‘first’ and ‘higher’ phase in the Critique. For ease I will use the
second set of terms. These come close to a ‘blueprint’ of communism and thus it
could be claimed Marx is contradicting himself. However, this can be defended
as what Marx claims is likely to happen if the revolution occurred in the near
future. Since we don’t know when it will happen we can’t guarantee this, but it
may be useful as a guide.
The first phase of communism occurs once the proletariat have seized power,
established their dictatorship and taken control of the means of production.
Importantly, this doesn’t mean property is abolished; property remains but
is owned by the state. Rather than working for a capitalist, everyone works
for the state, as Marx puts it ‘the community as universal capitalist’ (Marx
1992a:347). Therefore working conditions change little, but the way in which
one is paid and goods distributed changes notably. Rather than being paid in
a wage one gets a ‘receipt of labour’ which details how long one has worked.
This receipt can then be used to ‘withdraw from society’s stores of the means
36 social Theory For alTernaTive socieTies
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 37
and we will see labour as something we value and want to do; as Marx puts
it, labour will become ‘not merely a means to live but the foremost need in
life’ (Marx 1996c:214). By emphasising the centrality of labour and by pro-
viding the means of production to all communism is ‘the complete restora-
tion of man to himself as a social, that is human, being’ (Marx 1992a:348);
we can now cooperate in a friendly way to fulfil our fundamental human
need to labour and be creative. What we produce is then distributed accord-
ing to need and communism embodies the creed ‘from each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs’ (Marx 1996c:215). We all contrib-
ute what our abilities allow us to do and the fruits of our labours are then
distributed according to need. Such a system is impossible under the first
phase of communism where alienated relationships remain; it is possible in
the higher phase.
This vision of communism is also given a particular twist by Marx concern-
ing the division of labour. As we saw earlier Marx saw this as one of the key
elements of alienation; we were forced to do one job and, in particular, there
was a strict divide between mental and physical labour. One was either a scien-
tist or a plumber, being both was impossible. With the emergence of the higher
phase of communism this is no longer the case; instead we do multiple jobs at
a daily level. As Marx and Engels put it in a quote from The German Ideology
which, despite its brevity, is perhaps the most detailed description of everyday
life under communism they offered:
as soon as the division of labour comes into being, each man has a par-
ticular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from
which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a
critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of
livelihood; whereas in communist society, where nobody has one exclu-
sive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch
he wishes, society regulates the general production and this makes it pos-
sible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the
morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after
dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman,
shepherd or critic. (Marx and Engels 1998:53)
Since society provides people with the things they need to survive it is then pos-
sible to experiment in many different fields. Importantly, as the quote suggests,
this removes the distinction between physical and mental labour; each is as
productive as the other. Indeed:
The initial response upon hearing such a claim may be to doubt its plausibility;
can people really excel in many fields? To explain how this would happen, it is
worthwhile turning to education.
The final of the ten demands in The Communist Manifesto called for the
abolition of child labour ‘in its present form’. This qualification is central since,
as much as it may surprise the modern reader, Marx was in favour of child
labour, indeed he argues that ‘a general prohibition of child labour is incom-
patible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious
wish’ (Marx 1996c:225). The reason for this concerned early-years education.
Currently, the education system creates a strict division between academic and
physical work. To be at school is to do academic work. In this system, for
Marx, it is likely the children of the bourgeoisie succeed while proletarian chil-
dren ‘fail’. The result being that physical labour becomes that which children
who have ‘failed’ at school do, while mental labour is for those that ‘succeed’.
This reproduces the false dichotomy between the two when both are as creative
and fulfilling as each other (Marx 1976:618–19). Therefore, any communist
system should provide an education which is ‘both theoretical and practical’
(Marx 1976:619) including child labour. This would ensure that from an early
age children are not divided into one form of labour but rather develop the
skills for both. From this point on it would seem a system of lifelong learn-
ing would allow us to experiment in different forms of creative physical and
mental labour.
We have seen that Marx has suggestions for what communism could look
like given the conditions at the time he wrote. I have noted at points how these
changes could be seen to overcome the problems of capitalism. I will expand
on this in the conclusion; before then there is one final factor to consider, an
historical event which some have suggested was Marx’s vision of communism
come to life.
During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71 the city of Paris was under siege
for just under four months. This was a period made famous by the citizens of
the city turning to eating rats (although rat, due to the cost of making it edible,
was a meal for the rich and most were left eating dog, bird, mice and cat) and
using hot-air balloons to send messages to the outside world. After the French
surrender and lifting of the siege the government remained in exile at Versailles
and the people of Paris were left to rebuild the city. Throughout this period
the animosity of the proletariat towards the government had been building.
It was believed the latter had left the working class of Paris to the siege and,
with the war over, were following Prussian requests to subdue their demands.
These pressures were only increased by a variety of factors, including the order
that the working-class districts of the city, armed during the siege as part of
the National Guard, be disarmed; evacuation of Paris by much of its previous
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 39
governing class and the government’s claiming of overdue rents and bills which
threaten to bankrupt many. All of these factors led to a revolt and capture
of the city by the Paris Commune, a municipal government partly made up
from, and mainly supported by, the working-class areas of the city. This was a
short-run body, lasting from 18 March to 28 May 1871 before being brutally
slaughtered in a government offensive later named ‘bloody week’ in which gov-
ernment troops were ‘sheer savages, athirst for blood’ (Cole 1954:161). During
this week, roughly 25,000 people, the large majority being supporters of the
Commune, were killed (see Cole 1954:134–73; Horne 2007:247–433).
During the Commune, and following it with the publication of The Civil War
in France, Marx became somewhat of a media figure. Seen as the ‘Red Terrorist
Doctor’ it was claimed he, being head of the First International (a collection of
global socialist parties), was the man truly ‘pulling the strings’ of the Commune
from his base in London (Horne 2007:430). The reality is that although there
were members of the International in Paris in 1871, including some active in
the Commune, Marx’s influence was minimal and the lead was taken by fol-
lowers of Auguste Blanqui. Marx, in a feeling he held for many fellow socialists
of his time, had little respect for the Blanquists and was ‘temperamentally out
of sympathy with every one of the French groups’ when the Commune began
(Cole 1954:141). However, Marx’s pamphlet on the Commune was to have an
enormous impact upon Marxist communism from that point on.
What was important about the Commune for Marx was that it was a
‘working-class government’ (Marx 1996b:187). It included members of the
working class and acted in their interests. Marx highlights four further elements
of the Commune which gave it this character:
1. Universal suffrage and recall – not only was every resident of Paris given
the vote, but elections became a system to ‘serve the people’ rather than to
‘misrepresent the people’ (Marx 1996b:185). This was achieved by frequent
elections and a strict system of recall whereby ‘Communards’ (members of
the Commune government) showing themselves to be incompetent or not
following the will of the people could be swiftly removed.
2. A working wage – the Communards were paid the same wage as the work-
ers they served in the government. Such wages, Marx notes sarcastically,
were elsewhere considered one fifth of ‘the minimum required for a secre-
tary of a certain metropolitan school board’ (Marx 1996b:188–9).
3. The election of the bureaucracy – any position of power – judges, police,
functionaries and so on – was subject to election and recall and all were
paid the working wage. The Commune almost immediately disbanded the
regular police force and standing army to be replaced with elections in the
former case and the National Guard in the latter. As Marx ironically points
out this meant that ‘the Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revo-
lutions, cheap government, a reality’ (Marx 1996b:187).
4. Its existence as a government of the universal class – the most important
thing about the Commune for Marx was the very fact it existed, as he puts
40 social Theory For alTernaTive socieTies
it ‘the great social measure of the Commune was its own working exist-
ence’ (Marx 1996b:192). Some of the policies it enacted, such as an end to
night-time baking and limits on the ability of employers to punish workers,
although worthwhile in and of themselves, were more important as symbols
of proletariat power. Paris ruled by the Commune became ‘radiant in the
enthusiasm of its historical initiative’ (Marx 1996b:194).
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 41
with internal class conflict but was, for Engels, entirely tactical. Not only was
the failure to expand an issue but even more important for Engels was the Com-
munards’ ‘holy awe with which they remained standing respectfully outside the
gates of the Bank of France … The bank in the hands of the Commune – this
could have been worth more than ten thousand hostages’ (Engels 1990:187).
Had the Commune been more forceful its communist credentials would have
shone through. Engels finishes the document with the following:
Of late, the German philistine has once more been filled with wholesome
terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gen-
tlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at
the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the Proletariat. (Engels
1990:191)
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Karl Marx and Friedrich engels 43
reference to need. Our needs are fulfilled by the wider community. It must be
acknowledged that Marx is sketchy on how exactly such a distribution would
occur, especially given the passing of the state in the higher phase of commu-
nism. Nevertheless, it seems the development of cooperative relationships is a
key element here; people would, in effect, look out for one another.
There are, of course, criticisms which could be raised against this system
of communism which may, as in the above point, come back to the idea of it
being unclear or poorly developed in Marx and Engels’ writings. However,
this criticism makes a negative out of a truly unique perspective claimed by
Marx and Engels. Throughout this book we will be seeing how critique has
led to suggestions of an alternative. Marx and Engels’ contribution is to argue
that, unlike the position of Weber, while the alternative emerges from scientifi-
cally discovered laws critique must be normative (for example, the idea humans
should labour freely) and social theory should be very clear whose side it is
on. Yet since social theorists will not be the ones creating the change it is not
their responsibility to detail it. To do so is to pretend that sociologists some-
how magically have the power to see into the future and know the conditions
under which this alternative will be created. Therefore, for Marx and Engels,
sociological alternatives are attempts to locate the conditions for change within
the current system, not to create that alternative from thin air. As we move
through the book we will see sociologists who both agree and disagree with
this statement.
If you visit Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery, London, you’ll find the fol-
lowing, the famed thesis 11 on Feuerbach (Marx 1992b:423), inscribed:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it.
make use of our liberties to seek out what we must do and to do it, to
smooth the functioning of the social machine, still so harsh on individu-
als, to place within their reach all possible means of developing their abili-
ties without hindrance, to work finally to make a reality of the famous
precept: to each according to his labour. (Durkheim 1973:55–6)
This chapter will show how Durkheim outlined a society which, with demo-
cratic ‘corporations’, moral education and the banning of inheritance, allows
individuals to live a full and just life. These corporations, in the form of coop-
eratives, will also be part of our discussion in the next chapter on Du Bois. I will
begin by outlining how Durkheim thought we should criticise society before
turning to the specific critique he offered. This concerned what he saw as the
malaise of contemporary society which I will suggest had three components:
moral, economic and political. From here we will see how Durkheim’s alterna-
tive hoped to lessen, and ultimately remove, this malaise.
In recent years there has been a shift towards a ‘new cultural Durkheim’
where, rather than emphasising concepts such as the division of labour, ano-
mie and socialism – seen as ideas from Durkheim’s ‘first century’ – ideas such
as ritual, the sacred and collective representations are now central (Smith and
Alexander 2005:31). This is part of the ‘turn-taking’ discussed in the ‘Introduc-
tion’ where particular visions of theorists become dominant and others are
44
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 45
rejected. However, this chapter is very much focused on these so-called ‘first-
century’ concepts since it is these, not the cultural concepts, that are central to
Durkheim’s alternative. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate the value of these
concepts for Durkheim’s sociological vision. Therefore Durkheim is particu-
larly relevant for this book since the very basis of his sociological method, with
its distinction of normal and pathological social facts, creates a ‘constant pre-
occupation’ with ‘practical questions’ (Durkheim 1982:160) concerning how
society can, and should, be ordered. This is manifested in factors such as the
division of labour and anomie. This opens up a different space for sociologi-
cal alternatives to that found in the work of Marx and Engels and, as we shall
see, Durkheim uses this to conceive of a radical alternative to the society he
confronted.
way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individ-
ual an external constraint; or: which is general over the whole of a given
society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of individual
manifestations. (Durkheim 1982:59)
So, as an example Durkheim often used, morality is a social fact since it pro-
vides a set of prohibitions which limit the behaviours considered (in)appropri-
ate in different situations (Durkheim 1961:42). Since these rules are developed
by society, rather than individuals, they exert influence upon us and limit the
activities we should or should not do. This means social facts are independ-
ent of individuals: the morality of our society exists before we enter into it
and will remain there after we die. This does not mean moral rules remain
unchanged. But there will always be a social morality external to the individ-
ual in which some precepts remain stable over time (Durkheim 1953:61). This
is why, in Durkheim’s famous claim, social facts must be treated as ‘things’,
which we are able to study in the same way as observable phenomena (Dur-
kheim 1982:60).
How do we study social facts? Here Durkheim is clear that ‘the function of a
social fact must always be sought in the relationship that it bears to some social
end’ (Durkheim 1982:134). To stick with our example, to understand why cer-
tain moral rules are developed and followed, we need to understand how they
relate to certain essential functions and precepts of society. For example, moral
46 soCial theory for alternative soCieties
to know whether the present economic state … with the lack of organisa-
tion that characterises it, is normal or not, we must investigate what in
the past gave rise to it. If the conditions are still those appertaining to
our societies, it is because the situation is normal, despite the protest that
it stirs up. If, on the other hand, it is linked to that old social structure
which … is now increasingly dying out, we shall be forced to conclude
that this now constitutes a morbid state, however universal it may be.
(Durkheim 1982:95)
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 47
Durkheim lived through a period that later came to be known as the Fin de
Siècle (literally, end of an era) which was known for the ‘pessimism, cynicism
and ennui’ felt by many intellectuals during 1880–1910 (Meštrović 1991:2).
In particular, there was a fear that the advances of industrial capitalism and
technology had a destructive impact on society. While we must be careful not
to exaggerate the connection, Durkheim was certainly part of this mood; his
writings make frequent reference to what he termed ‘our collective malaise’
(Durkheim 1959:7). It was this malaise, the pathological social facts and the
feeling that something had gone wrong which Durkheim critiqued and hoped
to change with his sociological alternative. Importantly, as the below indicates,
although Durkheim was very aware of inequality, he did not see this malaise as
solely affecting the working class, arguing instead that it was ‘general over the
whole of society’ (Durkheim 1899:143).
Before turning to this we must, following Durkheim’s methodology, estab-
lish the key principles of society; what is it that allowed society to function
and therefore could be seen as its central values? Here Durkheim was clear
in his answer: contemporary society values, and is based upon, individualism
(Durkheim 1973). By this Durkheim does not mean the self-centred search for
individual satisfaction – what he terms ‘the egoistic cult of the self’ (Durkheim
1973:45) or ‘egoism’ (Durkheim 1952:251) – but something broader, a sense of
duty to respect the dignity of each individual – what we would now term ‘human
rights’. Individualism means that we accept the right of each person to follow
their own path and realise their desires (Durkheim 1973:45–8). Durkheim
argues this form of individualism has become ‘our religion … in which man is at
once the worshiper and the god’ (Durkheim 1973:46). Each individual is sacred
and to harm or stand in their way is a form of secular sin. The value given to this
is partly due to the complexity of modern societies. Previously individuals were
united by a shared religion and values while also, in a period of a low division of
labour, doing similar tasks. This meant such values could unite individuals and
could direct their allegiance to a shared religious creed. Now, with the different
values, religious practices and high division of labour there is no shared body
strong enough to generate such reverence. This means ‘nothing remains which
men can love and honour in common if not man himself’ (Durkheim 1973:52).
It should be noted that Durkheim’s use of ‘men’ may not just be a relic of his
time. As others have argued (Witz and Marshall 2004; Cristi 2012) Durkheim’s
conception of individualism seemed to privilege men and their public activity.
While not wishing to sideline such a valuable critique which highlights flaws
in Durkheim’s idea of individualism, for the rest of this chapter we can sug-
gest that since Durkheim had no basis for such a distinction (Cristi 2012), and
since his alternative did not state any particular relationship between the gen-
ders, we should imagine his conception of individualism as universal. This does
not mean such a conception of individualism is impervious to further critique,
rather that for this chapter we can use it as a working concept.
48 soCial theory for alternative soCieties
Moral malaise
We are not then obliged to bend our heads under the force of moral
opinion. We can even in certain cases feel ourselves justified in rebelling
against it … we shall feel it out duty to combat moral ideas that we know
to be out of date and nothing more than survivals. The best way of doing
this may appear to be the denial of these ideas, not only theoretically but
also in action. (Durkheim 1953:61)
A good case of this could be those who hid, or aided the escape of, Jews dur-
ing World War II due to an overriding belief in what Durkheim would see as
individualism, rather than subservience to the ideals of Nazism.
Therefore, morality as a social fact is essential but it must be directly related,
and relevant, to our activities; this is what makes it normal. If it does not relate
to such activity and seems immoral, we will reject that set of rules. This leads
Durkheim to make a distinction between two sets of moral rules (Durkheim
1992). Firstly, there are civic morals. These are broad moral guidelines which
hold for the whole of society, such as the value of individualism. The state is
essential to the development of these since, as the ‘social brain’, it is able to
develop the ‘collective representations’ of the values, priorities and ideals which
provide the basis for civic morals (Durkheim 1992:51–3).
The second form of moral guidelines is professional ethics; these concern
the division of labour. While the division of labour was an evil to be fought for
Marx, Durkheim saw it as both inevitable and worthy; as knowledge increases
tasks become more specific and require more training (Durkheim 1984).
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 49
The result is that we are all left doing particular, and divergent, jobs. However,
no form of civic morals could account for this diversity since:
Economic malaise
The moral malaise mentioned above, and the expansion of the amoral char-
acter of economic life it engenders, also has a profound economic impact.
There are two factors Durkheim highlights here: just versus unjust contracts
50 soCial theory for alternative soCieties
and economic anomie. Both are united by seeing inequality as a central factor.
Unlike Marx, Durkheim advocates the achievement of greater economic equal-
ity as an essential goal in the here and now.
Let us begin with contracts. One thing that determines our economic activity
under capitalism for Durkheim is that we are bound by contracts; most promi-
nently, there is the contract we sign as an employee or employer. When consider-
ing contracts Durkheim argues they have undergone a historical shift. In earlier
economic systems, such as feudalism, a contract was considered appropriate if
it was consensual (Durkheim 1992:186). However, as time passed and capital-
ism emerged contracts became more numerous and important; as a result, they
are regulated by laws. At this point there emerges a fundamental shift in how
contracts are judged. It is not enough that they be consensual, they must also
be just. A just contract is one in which ‘things and services are exchanged at
the true and normal value, in short, at the just value’ (Durkheim 1992:211).
So, were you tricked into buying a product at a price which you latter found
out was not justified or if it was misadvertised, the fact you consented to buy
it would not mean you give up your right to challenge the contract; you could
challenge it because it was unjust.
Therefore, any contract we sign as an employee should be a just contract; we
should be getting a just value for our labour. This is where we face a problem
for Durkheim: just employment contracts are, at the best rare, at the worst
impossible, under capitalism. To understand why, it is worthwhile quoting Dur-
kheim at length:
If, for instance, the one contracts to obtain something to live on, and
the other only to obtain something to live better on, it is clear that the
force of resistance of the latter will far exceed that of the former, by the
fact that he can drop the idea of contracting if he fails to get the terms
he wants. The other cannot do this. He is therefore obliged to yield and
to submit to what is laid down for him. Now inheritance as an institu-
tion results in men being born either rich or poor; that is to say, there are
two main classes in society, linked by all sorts of intermediate classes:
the one which in order to live has to make its services acceptable to the
other at whatever the cost; the other class which can do without these
services … Therefore as long as such sharp class differences exists in soci-
ety, fairly effective palliatives may lessen the injustice of contracts; but in
principle, the system operates in conditions which do not allow of justice.
(Durkheim 1992:213)
Capitalism creates a system whereby one group, the employer, has the means to
survive on their wealth for a period whereas the other, the worker, has no such
means and must work immediately to survive. In such a situation the employer
can wait until the employee accepts the wage the employer determines, even if
this is below what the worker needs. As the quote also suggests, the worker is
aware of this. While the ‘palliatives’ – or, as Durkheim (1992:11) terms them
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 51
elsewhere, ‘peace treaties’ – such as small wage increases, more holiday days
or union recognition lessen some of the injustice, they cannot remove it. The
result is that ‘the stronger succeed in crushing the not so strong or at any rate
in reducing them to a state of subjection’ creating ‘ever-recurring conflicts’
between employers and employees until the workers get their ‘longed-for day
of revenge’ (Durkheim 1992:11). As this indicates, while Durkheim was reluc-
tant to use the term ‘class war’ since the malaise was ‘general’, he certainly saw
conflict between the workers and capitalists as an inherent part of the unjust
system.
The above quote also suggested the cause for such injustice: inheritance. For
Durkheim, as long as people were allowed to inherit wealth, gained through
no effort or initiative of their own, inequality would continue. Durkheim con-
demns inheritance in the strongest possible terms, saying it is ‘contrary to the
spirit of individualism’ (Durkheim 1992:217) and therefore pathological. As
we shall see, his alternative attacked this head-on.
However, it is not just inheritance which is to blame for unjust contracts;
were professional ethics established it seems unlikely such contracts would be
so prominent. This lack of professional ethics and resulting extension of the
amoral character of economic life also creates ‘economic anomie’. Anomie is
one of Durkheim’s most used concepts and while it has become known as a
sense of being detached from the norms of society, or ‘normlessness’, in Sui-
cide Durkheim (1952:201–19) uses it in a very specific way in relation to the
economy. This is based upon Durkheim’s view on humans’ insatiable appetites.
Our idea of what it is to be comfortable has no natural limits, rather our desires
for wealth, satisfaction and luxury are ‘unlimited so far as they depend on the
individual alone’ (Durkheim 1952:208). This is especially important when it
comes to wealth. Without the moral guidelines of professional ethics, having
wealth simply begets the desire for more wealth as ‘the more one has, the more
one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs’
(Durkheim 1952:209). We enter a state of economic anomie when these desires
are completely free from the limits of moral authority, which, for Durkheim,
was clearly present in the time of the malaise. Economic anomie was a ‘chronic’
occurrence (Durkheim 1952:215), as could be seen in the ruthless greed of the
employer constructing unjust contracts.
The greed of the wealthy not only is self-perpetuating under a state of eco-
nomic anomie but also engenders further confrontation. Wealth is, for Dur-
kheim, a unique privilege; having more of it guarantees the opening of further
possibilities and opportunities. Moreover, becoming rich is seen as an individual
success story; we attribute the success of businessmen such as Steve Jobs or Bill
Gates to individual triumph and hard work. As Durkheim puts it wealth ‘by the
power it bestows, deceives us into believing that we depend on ourselves only.
Reducing the resistance we encounter from objects, it suggests the possibility of
unlimited success against them’ (Durkheim 1952:214). This is incorrect; pro-
ducing wealth relies upon others, especially in a society with a wide division of
labour. Steve Jobs did not become rich on his own; he became rich through the
52 soCial theory for alternative soCieties
Political malaise
The political malaise is linked to the aforementioned issue of the state being
‘too far removed’ from individuals, meaning there is a ‘lack of secondary cadres
to interpose between the individual and the State’ (Durkheim 1992:96). The
lack of more specialised forms of political expression means that all political
activities are centred on the nation state. This has two negative impacts for
Durkheim. The first one, suggested in the section on the moral malaise, is that
the state is too remote from our individual, everyday, activity to solve the prob-
lems located there, particularly to provide moral guidelines. This is especially
so when it comes to economic life. Not only does our work life become ‘very
special and is daily becoming increasingly specialised’ (Durkheim 1984:xxxv)
but, with geographical and social mobility, it is beginning to take the central
place in our life once filled by family or local affairs (Durkheim 1984).
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 53
The second impact of the political malaise concerns our attitude towards col-
lective issues. Despite his focus on individualism Durkheim was in many ways
an associational thinker, concerned with how people act together since such
associational activity is inevitable:
political life is such that we take part in it only intermittently. The State
is far away. We are not directly involved in its activity … We do not con-
stantly encounter those great political causes that can excite us, to which
we can give ourselves entirely. (Durkheim 1961:233)
We get what in modern terms would be called political apathy; ‘politics’ seems
too far removed from us and irrelevant to our day-to-day activities. The result
for Durkheim is that we are likely to shun collective affairs and instead develop
‘the habit of acting like lone wolves’ when politics and collective concerns seem
irrelevant to our lives (Durkheim 1961:234). Given this we turn to our own
individual interests. When combined with the moral and economic malaise we
can see that Durkheim fears the selfishness and greed of egoistic individualism
has been unleashed fully and we have little collective concern.
In the previous three sections we have seen the main components of Dur-
kheim’s critique: the moral, economic and political malaise. As I have noted
these three combined indicate a concern about excessive egoistic individualism,
which is partly explained by the weakness of morality in professional ethics,
as well as economic inequality, political apathy and conflict between the rich
and the poor; these are pathological social facts standing in the way of true
individualism. What solution does Durkheim have?
Durkheim’s alternatives
of how these alternatives operate together. These three are: the corporations,
the banning of inheritance and moral education. I will discuss each in turn and
highlight how they solve problems of the malaise.
The corporations
These are the most important of Durkheim’s three alternatives and form the
basis upon which the other two are built. Given that the lack of professional
ethics is a recent occurrence, Durkheim looks to what in the past could have
played this role and identifies the guilds. These, in place for most of the feudal
period, were local bodies, made up of the most specialised workers. They had
a certain amount of control over the workers, voluntarily agreed by its mem-
bers, and were able to set common guidelines. The guilds began to disappear
with the movement of workers to cities and factories plus the increased use of
machine-based production (Hawkins 1994).
For Durkheim the death of the guilds was appropriate; they were too focused
on locality – ‘local patriotism’ as he calls it – to fit the demands of modern
life. However, he calls the rejection of any collective association like the guilds
a result of ‘historic prejudice’ (Durkheim 1992:28) where ‘because the new
industry did not fit in with the [guilds], a conclusion from this was drawn
that it was opposed, in principle, to every kind of organization’ (Durkheim
2009:4). Nothing, for Durkheim, could be further from the truth. The lack of
professional ethics and the resulting conflict between employer and employee
demonstrate the need for some form of workplace organisation.
This is the role of the corporations. A corporation is a body made up of all
the individuals working in a specific profession, meaning there would be a
corporation for plumbers, one for computer technicians, one for teachers and
so on. Importantly, this would include workers as well as managers; therefore
the corporation is made up ‘of all those working in the same industry, assem-
bled together and organized in a single body’ (Durkheim 1984:xxxv). This
separates them from the trade unions which, as we saw above, Durkheim saw
as encouraging sectional interests. Once established the corporations in effect
run the industry: they determine the wages of all levels, lay down guidelines
(including the rights of workers) and establish common policies, including the
price of goods (Durkheim 1984:xxxi–lix). Durkheim also argued the corpora-
tions would provide non-professional activities for its members, such as edu-
cation, ‘drama performances, recreation and intellectual pursuits’ (Durkheim
1984:liii). These corporations would be internally democratic, but, since asking
all workers to meet in order to debate would be impractical, representatives
would be elected. The result is the following:
Let us imagine – spread over the whole country – the various industries
grouped in separate categories based on similarity and natural affinity.
An administrative council, a kind of miniature parliament, nominated by
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 55
Durkheim then extends this principle even further. Given that our professional
activity is so important to our daily life all political representation, including
voting for the national government, should be done there. Instead of voting in
our local constituency, we would vote as part of our occupation. This would
mark a fundamental change:
Therefore the corporation would become the key element of our daily life.
While Durkheim suggests joining our corporation would not be compul-
sory (Durkheim 1952:346) ultimately he believes most will join voluntarily
(Durkheim 1992:39).
Why does Durkheim place such value in the corporations? Most important
is their aforementioned everyday connection. Since we spend most days, and
a lot of time, at work our corporation is ‘always in contact’ with us, due to
‘the constant exercise’ of our occupational activity (Durkheim 1952:346).
The issues raised by the corporation are ones we have a direct connection to.
While the activities of the state seemed withdrawn from us, question of our
wages, working conditions and rights are very much our concern. They would
also, through including all levels of the profession, lessen some of the con-
flict between employer and employees. By setting wage levels and conditions
of employment according to principles of justice they would also prevent the
extreme inequalities of pay (Durkheim 1984:xxxix).
However, their key purpose returns us to professional ethics. Corporations, as
specialised bodies, are able to develop the professional ethics which are beyond
the abilities of the nation state. Consequently, the guidelines of work drawn
up by the corporations would be not only practical but moral guidelines. For
example, the plumber’s corporation would provide professional ethics by say-
ing what is moral as a plumber, as well as highlighting the wider moral value
of plumbers to society. Currently, we go about our professional work without
much consideration of its value to society as a whole. This, for Durkheim, is
inevitable since ‘the individual can take in no more than a small stretch of the
56 soCial theory for alternative soCieties
So, as we can see, the corporation, as a moral authority, limits the desires of the
rich and instead creates clear reciprocal interests for all. By determining how
much each person deserves in a wage it also, inter alia, determines the social
value of their work. This new moral discipline provides what was missing dur-
ing a period of economic anomie.
Finally, the corporations combat the political malaise by providing a political
body in between the individual and the state, connected to our everyday activ-
ity. Not only does this lessen the level of political apathy in our daily lives, it can
also provide the basis for a reinvigorated form of national government based
upon occupational representation.
Despite how powerful the corporations would be they cannot combat all ele-
ments of the malaise. Notably, despite the admirable goal of a more equitable
distribution of wages, they do not fully remove the economic inequality Dur-
kheim saw as problematic to modern society. This is where the next alternative
comes in.
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 57
Banning inheritance
This can only be achieved by removing the inbuilt and unjust advantage some
have gained through inheritance.
58 soCial theory for alternative soCieties
Whereas the two alternatives discussed thus far have been specifically
economic – although with moral and political outcomes – the final one will
turn our attention to a wider social issue: moral education.
Moral education
Given the fact sociology was never fully established as an academic discipline
in France during Durkheim’s lifetime, despite his Herculean efforts to do so, his
job title did not include the word ‘sociology’ until 1913. This was after all his
major works had been published and barely five years before his death; even
then he had to settle for ‘Professor of Education and Sociology’. Indeed, it was
as a professor of education that Durkheim spent much of his life. This required
him to research, lecture and write on a topic which he otherwise may well have
avoided (Fournier 2013:417). Durkheim’s nephew Marcel Mauss claimed his
uncle saw his teaching on education as a ‘burden’ (Lukes 1973:110). However,
Durkheim’s personal loss is sociology’s gain since his main lecture course, Moral
Education, was eventually published (Durkheim 1961). Here Durkheim out-
lines a new philosophy of education which complements his other alternatives.
The idea of moral education emerges via the shift from a religious to a sec-
ular education. Without religion education required a central theme which,
for Durkheim, should be morality (Durkheim 1961). As Cladis (1995) points
out, ‘education’ for Durkheim is much broader than simply the imparting of
knowledge in a classroom, being closer to ‘socialisation’. Therefore, the school
is to take the central role in moral socialisation which previously would have
been left to the church or the family. The school is well placed to do this for
Durkheim since, much like the corporations, it is an institution between the
individual and the state able to take a collective view, unlike the narrow view
of the family or church. As he put it, ‘we have through the school the means
of training the child in a collective life different from home life’ (Durkheim
1961:235). This is a central task for Durkheim since, even with the best profes-
sional ethics and civic morals, if:
beyond school age – the foundations of morality have not been laid,
they never will be. From this point on, all one can do is to complete the
job already begun, defining sensibilities and giving them some intellec-
tual content, i.e., informing them increasingly with intelligence. But the
groundwork must have been laid. (Durkheim 1961:18)
Therefore, for the school to perform its task correctly it must develop three key
elements of morality. The first of these is discipline, whereby one must recog-
nise that moral rules carry with them some authority. Durkheim can be very
strict here, for example, claiming ‘one must obey a moral precept out of respect
for it and for this reason alone’ (Durkheim 1961:30). The explanation for this
returns us to the ‘religious’ nature of contemporary morality since ‘a society
stands in relation to its members as a god stands in relation to his followers’
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 59
out in the course of everyday life’ (Durkheim 1961:244). Durkheim also sug-
gests new rewards. Noting that currently there are only rewards for academic
achievement, he argues there should also be one for exemplary moral activity,
which he terms a ‘prize for virtue’ (Durkheim 1961:206).
Turning to the school environment, we saw earlier that Durkheim argued
there was currently a reluctance to engage in associational activity. Therefore,
in order for the corporations to have fully committed members it is important
to develop the associational spirit early. Here Durkheim returns to the value
of the class. Rather than just a collection of students the class should be seen
by the students as having its own personality which, Durkheim suggests, many
teachers already know each class has. As he puts it, ‘such phrases as the class,
the spirit of the class, and the honour of the class must become something
more than abstract expressions in the student’s mind’ (Durkheim 1961:241). In
order to achieve this Durkheim argues that groups should stay together from
the beginning of school to the end and as the class progresses through the edu-
cational levels a summary of its rewards, accomplishments and work should
travel with it (Durkheim 1961:244). This is intended to make the students feel
like part of an association where ‘the value of each is a function of the worth
of all’ (Durkheim 1961:245). This is another reason why Durkheim favours
rewards for the class as a whole.
Therefore, as we have seen, Durkheim gives education an important role in
the curing of the malaise. Its most prominent role is, by developing the compo-
nents of morality in the child, lessening some of the issues of the moral malaise.
However, by also developing the spirit of association – and therefore creating
the conditions for the flourishing of the corporations – it has a part to play in
combating its political and economic forms.
Conclusion
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Émile Durkheim: Curing the malaise 61
Du Bois lived an eventful life, marked by its length as well as its scope. He
was born three years after the end of the civil war and died the day before
Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech. Therefore, Du Bois
62
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A BlAck RADicAl AltERnAtivE 63
experienced, and participated in, a profound era for black politics in the US. He
grew up in the town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and had a relatively
secure upbringing. This was indicated by his childhood belief that success was
open to all who were willing to work hard, regardless of race or class (Du Bois
1984:8–24). It was only during his later school years that Du Bois spoke of his
growing recognition that ‘some folks, a few, even several, actually considered
my black skin a misfortune’ (Du Bois 2003:40). Small instances, such as the
white girl who refused his calling card (Du Bois 1984:14), added up to a realisa-
tion of his different position from others. This was only enhanced during a trip
to Germany where he realised the racism he experienced in the US was specific.
Here his desire to advance the position of black people in his home country
was born. Upon the completion of his studies Du Bois held posts at Wilberforce
College followed by Pennsylvania and Atlanta Universities. It was during these
years that his critique, and the earliest form of his alternative, was developed.
To understand Du Bois’ critique we must turn to his starting point: the eve-
ryday experience of racism. For Du Bois, as in his experience with the girl
who refused his card, awareness of one’s ethnicity occurs through everyday
practices and interactions. However, this is only true of those who are not
white; whiteness allows one to have the realisation that their world ‘is white
and by that token, wonderful!’ (Du Bois 2003:56). Indeed, to be white is to be
not actively aware of your race. However, if you are black, this is not possible,
daily acts remind you of your race, whether it be people ignoring you, cross-
ing the street when they saw you, addressing only your white companion or
finding landlords unwilling to rent. Du Bois experienced all of these, as well
as, during a summer job as a waiter, finding his well-educated black friend
playing the clown for a group of white diners knowing this was likely to lead
to tips (Du Bois 2003:127–8). Importantly, while such acts of racism were not
necessarily a daily occurrence, Du Bois had a constant awareness that they
can be. It may have been four days since a taxi driver ignored him in the rain
as he waved his hand, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen today. The area
he lived in may be relatively free of racially motivated violence (including the
lynching he would read about in the daily paper) but there’s no guarantee today
isn’t the day where it happens. These events add up to a continual awareness of
one as different, as a problem:
measuring one’s self by the standards imposed by whiteness (Du Bois 1994:2).
This creates a fundamental ‘two-ness’ of being where one is forced to ask:
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the colour-line I move
arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming
women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing
between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon
Aristotle and Aurelius and what I will, and they come all graciously with
no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.
(Du Bois 1994:67)
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A BlAck RADicAl AltERnAtivE 65
in which Robert Park, one of the key figures in early American sociology, was
active (Magubane 2014). However, in reaching this position Washington has
crafted a very particular political programme, of which Du Bois had two criti-
cisms (Du Bois 1994:25–36). Firstly, Washington had framed the struggle for
emancipation purely as one of uplift and education, arguing that political liberty
and rights were not, at that time, the most important factor for a group who
lacked basic schooling. While, as we shall see, Du Bois shared this concern with
education, he argued that the sole focus on this had harmed the cause of African-
Americans rights. This had included some reversal of rights post-slavery and the
lack of any political action to confront lynching and other forms of violence. The
second factor concerned the form of education on offer. Washington had devel-
oped Tuskegee and other institutions to focus largely on a vocational education,
the reasoning behind this being that, in the short term, such teaching and the
occupations it allowed were the best available option for black students. Du Bois
saw such an education – which excluded the reading of Shakespeare, Balzac,
Dumas and the writers he had adored ‘above the Veil’ – as furthering inequality
by restricting African-Americans to vocational work and leaving the academic
world to whites. It was not fortuitous for someone in Du Bois’ position to disa-
gree with Washington, as he later lamented (Du Bois 1984:72). Washington’s
dominance in the civil rights movement meant that any alternative programme,
such as Du Bois’, was unlikely to occur without his approval. This, as we shall
see, encouraged his later move away from academia and into activism.
Before this rupture, Du Bois was busy trying to carve a space for himself,
and sociology, within what was termed at the time ‘the study of Negro prob-
lems’ (Williams 2006). For Du Bois, sociology was the discipline that sought
to understand the nature of social laws. In understanding how people work
within and against these laws it is ‘the science that seeks the limits of Chance in
human conduct’ (Du Bois 2000:44). Such a view of sociology can be found in
his study on The Philadelphia Negro (Du Bois 1996).
This study was an early example of the kind of urban ethnography whose
method was later popularised in sociology by the Chicago School. However, at
the time of its publication, it was largely ignored, including at the University
of Pennsylvania where Du Bois was working at the time. It would later be
mentioned more frequently for its ground-breaking nature, leading Du Bois to
comment that ‘nobody ever reads that fat volume on “The Philadelphia Negro”
but they treat it with respect, and that consoles me’ (Du Bois 2003:47). At
nearly 400 pages it was indeed a ‘fat volume’ but one with many insights into
the nature of African-American life. Important for our discussion is the con-
cluding chapter, ‘A Final Word’, in which Du Bois turns his focus towards the
causes of racism and the possible path forward. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Du
Bois blames ignorance but, importantly, places the ignorance on both sides.
The whites of the city had maintained their ignorance concerning the position
of their black counterparts by offering limited work opportunities and educa-
tion. The legacy of slavery and the Washington schooling had given whites
a (false) justification for claims of their superiority over black people. Given
that, at this point and for a long time after, there was no black middle class to
66 sociAl thEoRy foR AltERnAtivE sociEtiEs
Efforts to stop this crime must commence in the Negro homes; they must
cease to be, as they often are, breeders of idleness and extravagance and
complaint. Work, continuous and intensive; work, although it be menial
and poorly rewarded; work, though done in travail of soul and sweat of
brow, must be so impressed upon Negro children as the road to salvation,
that a child would feel it a greater disgrace to be idle than to do the hum-
blest labour. (Du Bois 1996:390)
This then links into a wider point for Du Bois: being black in America meant
knowing you had been the victim of a large-scale injustice whose impact could
still be felt years after its abolition. Nevertheless, this did not justify the claim
that the system which for a long period had allowed such injustice should be
overturned. Instead:
Therefore, the goal for African-Americans was not a new civilisation but
rather full inclusion in the existing one. Fortunately, in The Philadelphia Negro
Du Bois found a group able to institute this. Here he implores that ‘the better
classes of the Negroes should recognise their duty toward the masses’ (Du Bois
1996:392) and it is this which leads us to his first alternative.
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A BlAck RADicAl AltERnAtivE 67
These ‘better classes of the Negroes’ which Du Bois referred to would famously
be captured in his claim for a ‘Talented Tenth’, at whom his first alternative was
primarily aimed (Du Bois 1903). However, to appreciate the reason for this we
must begin with what determined a ‘race’ for Du Bois.
There were, for Du Bois, many ways to determine ‘race’; the most common
being skin colour, hair and language. However, all of these are faulty. Skin
colour varies greatly even for people who have similar backgrounds and, with
the increase in mixed-race relationships, is likely to have even less impor-
tance; the same can be said for hair and language. Instead, for Du Bois, races
are defined by culture, with each group having a distinctive cultural heritage
and practices which help create a shared racial identity. Modern civilisation,
marked by the interaction and mixture of races, is therefore shaped by the
contribution of all these distinct groups to a common heritage and culture
(Du Bois 1897:815–20).
In this black people had, in limited opportunities, developed their own cul-
ture and made a contribution to modern societies. As Du Bois puts it:
We are that people whose subtle sense of song had given America its only
American music, its only American fairy tales, its only touch of pathos
and humour amid its made money-getting plutocracy. As such, it is our
duty to conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our
spiritual ideals; as a race we must strive by race organisation, by race
solidarity, by race unity to the realisation of that broader humanity which
freely recognises differences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in
their opportunities of development. (Du Bois 1897:822)
For the man who will work, and dig, and starve, there is a chance to do
here incalculable good for the Negro race; for the woman in whose soul
the divine music of our fathers has touched some answering chord of
genius, there is a chance to do more than follow the masters; to all of you
in whom the tragedy of life, or its fitful comedy, has created a tale worth
the telling, there is a chance to gain listeners who will know no colour
line. (Du Bois 1898:838–9)
He then lists the potential paths open to graduates including ‘captains of indus-
try’, ‘well trained physicians’, ‘the Negro merchant’ and ‘specially trained teach-
ers’ among other professional/bourgeois occupations (Du Bois 1898:839). The
claim is clear: use the education of the ‘Negro Academy’, an example of which
existed at Fisk, as the basis for the development not of a black labouring class,
but rather a new black professional class: a Talented Tenth. As Du Bois put it,
‘I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is
to make carpenters men’ (Du Bois 1903:855).
The result of this alternative then, for Du Bois, means the problems identified
in the critique, the ignorance of both white and black Americans on the colour
line, can be overcome with the advancement of African-American education,
culture and class structure. This would then lead to the lessening of the prob-
lems found in the colour line and its attendant factors of the double conscious-
ness and the veil. If African-Americans are part of the ‘civilisation’ existing in
America – with their activities and class structure matching more clearly white
America – then the colour line lessens and the ‘twoness’ of being black and
American would be overcome. Resting behind this is an optimistic assumption
from Du Bois concerning the role of science and education in African-American
emancipation. This assumption was to be challenged by events.
Du Bois was a frequent user of autobiography in his work. This was perhaps
unsurprising given how living from within the veil was an experience he knew
intimately. However, while many sociologists have written autobiographies,
where Du Bois differed was that his biography was often interwoven with his
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A BlAck RADicAl AltERnAtivE 69
sociological writings. In this one particular story occurs frequently: the grue-
some death of Sam Hose.
Hose was a black man who had killed his landlord’s wife. While the circum-
stances of the case were contested it seems the victim had been a bystander to
an argument between Hose and her husband in which the former may have
been trying to defend himself. Whatever the circumstances, having heard of
Hose’s arrest Du Bois, then working at the University of Atlanta, put together
some data about the number of black men accused of murder and headed down
to the local newspaper to discuss the case. He never reached the newspaper
offices. On the way there he heard that Hose had been caught by a mob who
tortured and then lynched him; his knuckles were on sale in a butcher’s shop
further down the street on which Du Bois was walking (Du Bois 1984:67). As
he would later put it, ‘something died in me that day’ (Du Bois 1944:53). What
died was his belief in the possibility of rational and reasoned argument to solve
the problem of racism; when people were being tortured and their knuckles
sold as meat, scientific argument was not going to convince the torturers to
stop. Since ‘one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes
were lynched, murdered and starved’ (Du Bois 1984:67) a new role opened up
for Du Bois, beyond science:
I suddenly saw life, full and face to face; I began to know the problem of
Negroes in the United States as a present startling reality; and moreover
(and this was most upsetting) I faced situations that called – shrieked –
for action, even before any detailed, scientific study could possibly be
prepared. It was as though, as a bridge-builder, I was compelled to throw
a bridge across a stream without waiting for the careful mathematical
resting of materialism. Such testing was indispensable, but it had to be
done so often in the midst of building or even after construction, and not
in the calm and leisure long before. (Du Bois 1944:57)
This role was to be activism. Du Bois would become one of the first, and most
successful, examples of public sociology. He would remain a sociologist, in the
sense of using the tools of sociological analysis, but would do so from outside
the academy and the institutions of sociology, as an activist.
Du Bois’ most prominent activity concerned the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This was formed in 1909 partly
as an attempt to create a separate activist base away from the apparatus of
Booker T. Washington. Du Bois was central to its formation, helping push for
the use of the term ‘coloured’ rather than ‘black’ in order to broaden its poten-
tial reach and membership. Once the organisation was formed he was given
the post of director of publication and research which included being editor
of the house magazine The Crisis (DeMarco 1983:66). Given the centrality
of the written word as, at this point, the most effective means of mass com-
munication, this role was central to the NAACP’s advocacy goals. This also
changed Du Bois’ activity; while he continued to produce scholarly work his
70 sociAl thEoRy foR AltERnAtivE sociEtiEs
focus inevitably became one of writing for a mass audience and pushing the
causes of the NAACP. It also led to his greater public prominence as a spokes-
man for racial equality. His activities also took on an international focus, such
as helping to organise the first Pan-African Congress in 1921. This grew out of
a meeting at the Paris Congress which, following World War I, had famously
sidelined African voices while carving the continent up for the colonial powers
(Du Bois 1984:274–8).
While Du Bois was proud of his activist work it was not a role he was
comfortable with, commenting that ‘of the movement I was willy-nilly leader.
I hated the role’ (2003:49). It also led to difficult decisions and compromises
for Du Bois who was increasingly becoming influenced by Marxism (DeMarco
1983:63–78). For example, the NAACP had, as part of a general campaign
against segregation, fought against this in the army. However, once that fight
was lost and separate black units were formed, should the NAACP then join
the demand for black officers? This would allow for training and advancement
but seemed to approve of, and formalise, segregation. The organisation did
eventually decide to join the successful campaign for them. As Du Bois for-
lornly notes, despite such advances for some African-Americans, lynchings and
other forms of violence continued (Du Bois 1984:248–51).
Du Bois’ encounter with Marxism, encouraged by a trip to Soviet Russia
in the 1920s, which ‘was and still is to my mind, the most hopeful land in the
modern world’ (Du Bois 1944:60), caused further problems within the NAACP.
It meant that mainstream politicians were reluctant to be associated with the
organisation given the fear of communism. Furthermore, his increasingly eco-
nomically focused articles in The Crisis created disagreement with others in
the organisation who did not necessarily share his analysis. As we shall see
below, Du Bois also increasingly advocated a form of segregation which went
against the founding mission and activities of the organisation. Therefore,
while Du Bois would never give up his activism, having resigned his post with
the NAACP and The Crisis in 1934, he returned to the University of Atlanta.
Here he would develop his second critique and alternative which was based on
the legacy of the civil war.
The year after returning to academia Du Bois would publish perhaps his most
Marxist, and most impressive, text Black Reconstruction in America (Du Bois
1956). A historical study, this was concerned with the civil war and its immedi-
ate aftermath. For Du Bois, the war had quickly gained a ready story: it was
a war to end slavery. He contested this, arguing that it was started primarily
for economic reasons. The largely developed capitalist North took on a South
which was still partly feudal in order to institute a capitalist regime. This would
open up further markets and secure the cotton produced in the South which
was so central to the Northern economy. These goals did include the abolition
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A BlAck RADicAl AltERnAtivE 71
of slavery, a key tenet of capitalism being the ability to sell one’s labour, but this
was not central. The war also united the Southern white working class, who
were unable to compete with slave labour for jobs, with the black slaves. While
the entry of black soldiers into the Union army meant the war gained a moral
dimension (Du Bois 1956:83), it retained its original and primary goal as an
economic war for the advancement of capitalism.
Following the Northern victory reconstruction governments were imposed
on the South. Largely mandated by Washington D.C. these were intended to
ensure some level of black equality and political participation, alongside the
shift to a capitalist market. However, for Du Bois, it is at this point that the
class solidarity of the war begins to break down. Southern whites, previously
tied to the idea of ending slavery in order to relieve pressure on their own
wages, begin to resent the improved position of their black neighbours and the
loss of their previous colour-based advantage. Even more significantly, the end-
ing of slave labour pushes up the price of cotton. This then unites the Southern
bourgeoisie (who want to push the production cost back down to increase sur-
plus value), the Northern bourgeoisie (who wish the same) and the Northern
working class (at least its white component who find it difficult to afford the
increased price of goods). This ensures that the colour line between the white
and black working class is more significant than their shared class position (Du
Bois 1956:670–91). The result of this for Du Bois is that the Southern bourgeoi-
sie (universally white) had carte blanche to attack reconstruction government
for their supposed corruption. This had the added goal of seeking to control
the black labouring class by presenting a simple choice: either sign labour con-
tracts which tie you to work in conditions not far removed from slavery or be
lynched. Not unsurprisingly ‘from 1880 onward, in order to earn a living, the
American Negro was compelled to give up his political power’ culminating
in the replacement of reconstruction governments with white elites (Du Bois
1956:693). This then ensured that wider policies of reconstruction, including
education for the former slaves – at least beyond the vocational form conveni-
ently supported by Booker T. Washington – were impossible. Consequently:
It must be remembered and never forgotten that the civil war in the South
[the actions of the bourgeoisie following the original ‘civil war’] which
overthrew Reconstruction was a determined effort to reduce black labour
as nearly as possible to a condition of unlimited exploitation and build a
new class of capitalists on this foundation. (Du Bois 1956:670)
As we have seen, the nature of Du Bois’ second critique concerned the economic
position of African-Americans, seeing their inequality as due to the legacy of
the reconstruction era following slavery. Therefore, much more than his first
alternative, his second alternative has an economic focus. It also shares with
Durkheim an utilisation of bodies akin to the corporations to conduct eco-
nomic activity. Du Bois advocated the expansion of black-owned and run coop-
eratives. These would begin as cooperatives of consumption, before becoming
ones of production. In doing so they are said to build upon a successful history
of cooperation within the black community. Du Bois argues that most distinc-
tively ‘black’ organisations in the US, churches, professional groupings, arts
group and learned societies were established and continued to exist, almost
solely because of investment and support from those who use them (Du Bois
1984:197–8). Therefore, economic cooperation is the next step.
Such cooperatives would open in areas with a large black population and
encourage membership for all. Membership would not only allow one to shop
in the cooperative but would also entail some measure of contribution of
labour along with a vote in the affairs of the company (Du Bois 1984:212).
For Du Bois, if such cooperatives were able to capture the majority of the
black consumer market they would, especially in cities, quickly become large-
scale operations with significant turnover. Such large organisations would then
require some form of leadership and management which, reflecting the coop-
erative model, would be elected by the members.
This expansion of wealth would open possibilities for the cooperatives to
move into production. Whereas previously the stores would have been reliant
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A BlAck RADicAl AltERnAtivE 73
on outside producers (most likely members of the white bourgeoisie) for their
goods, by establishing production mechanisms the whole economic process,
from production to consumption, could stay within the black community. The
democratic mechanisms of the cooperatives also allow for the nature of such
production to change. Rather than occurring without any reference to need, the
goods produced could be voted upon and decided by the membership, creating
production linked to the needs of the community. Therefore, there would be a
separate, but powerful, black economy run on a cooperative basis.
As DeMarco (1983:139–50) notes, Du Bois differed in his use of the cooper-
ative idea over time. When he first began to advocate it, during his time editing
The Crisis, they were conceived as capitalist bodies, used for profit production
and developing black economic power. It was this which led to his role in estab-
lishing the Negro Co-Operative Guild, formed in his office at The Crisis head-
quarters (Du Bois 1984:280). In this period, they did not include mechanisms
for democratic control and were imagined as bodies useful for developing the
Talented Tenth. It was only later, with Du Bois’ increased turn to Marxism, that
they took on a democratic and productive basis. They became fundamentally
socialist, as opposed to capitalist, organisations, not just seeking to create a
segregated economy, but a different one.
This formation was no coincidence. In Dusk of Dawn, originally published
in 1940, Du Bois argues that:
We have reached the end of an economic era, which seemed but a few
years ago omnipotent and eternal. We have lived to see the collapse of
capitalism. It makes no difference what we may say, and how we may
boast in the United States of the failures and changed objectives of the
New Deal, and the prospective rehabilitation of the rule of finance capi-
tal; that is but wishful thinking. In Europe and in the United States as well
as in Russia the whole organisation and direction of industry is changing.
We are not called upon to be dogmatic as to just what the end of this
change will be and what form the new organisation will take. What we
are sure of is the present fundamental change. (Du Bois 1984:198–9)
Such sentiments, with the large-scale success of Roosevelt’s new deal, the rapid
development of the USSR under communist control and the emergence of fas-
cism in Europe, were not uncommon at the time (Sassoon 2010). What made
Du Bois’ position unique was that he sought to link this collapse of capitalism
to an opportunity for a marginalised group who were not a class, in this case
African-Americans, to be the vanguard of this new society. As he put it ‘we have
a chance here to teach industrial and cultural democracy to a world that bit-
terly needs it’ (Du Bois 1984:219). In doing so, the initial role of the coopera-
tives as consumer organisations is central since:
What I propose is that into the interstices of this collapse of the indus-
trial machine, the Negro shall search intelligently and carefully and
74 sociAl thEoRy foR AltERnAtivE sociEtiEs
far-sightedly plan for his entrance into the new economic world, not as a
continuing slave but as an intelligent free man with power in his hands.
I see this chance for planning in the role which the Negro plays as a con-
sumer. In the future reorganisation of industry the consumer as against
the producer is going to be the key man. Industry is going to be guided
according to his wants and needs and not exclusively with regard to the
profit of the producers and transporters. (Du Bois 1984:208)
Therefore, the cooperatives can indicate the future path for the economy
beyond capitalism. Consequently, while Du Bois’ second alternative is imagined
to apply initially only to African-Americans, the end goal is for it to expand
over society as a whole following the end of capitalism.
In addition to this, part of the justification for the cooperatives from Du
Bois is based upon the differential class positions of black and white America.
There was no black bourgeoisie and the working class was split along colour
lines, both politically and economically. Du Bois’ first alternative had relied
upon social mobility occurring along broadly cultural lines: provide an educa-
tion befitting of a professional class, and you will make a professional class.
Therefore, the hope was placed with a cultural elite. However, as he comments
when advocating his second alternative (Du Bois 1984:217), this was a mis-
take. Economic inequality and power are so strong that they cannot easily be
overcome by cultural means. This is why separate economic means are needed.
But reflecting his shift to Marxism, for Du Bois the cooperative is not a way to
create a new capitalist class for the part of America currently excluded from
this. Instead cooperation provides an alternative in which the goal is to over-
come such inequities. As a result, this will not be a system which allows people
to become rich. Like Durkheim, Du Bois argues that having internal votes on
the wages of managers in the cooperatives will keep wage differences down and
ensure greater equality. He recognises that this calls for ‘self-control’ since his
alternative will:
eliminate the millionaire and even the rich Negro; it will put the Negro
leader upon a salary which will be modest as American salaries go and
yet sufficient for a life under modern standards of decency and enjoy-
ment. It will eliminate also the pauper and the industrial derelict. (Du
Bois 1984:215)
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A BlAck RADicAl AltERnAtivE 75
immediately, to fight against the colour line but rather to recognise its promi-
nence and seek to find mechanisms within which the conditions of African-
Americans can be improved until the day, seemingly post-capitalism, in which
the colour line can be overcome. Therefore, it does not seek to remove the
problem of the double consciousness, at least not in the short term, but rather
to resolve it in favour of one side: the black side.
This leads us to another important factor to Du Bois’ second alternative:
it is, as we have seen, a programme of segregation. Du Bois’ move towards
advocating segregation, not only within the economy, was one of the factors
which led to his difficulties with the NAACP. For example, his later writings on
the ‘Negro College’ argued that these should be segregated, unlike his ‘Negro
Academies’ of the first alternative which, while primarily aimed at African-
Americans, would not make such segregation a policy (Du Bois 1933). Du Bois
increasingly faced open censure in the pages of The Crisis for advocating this
position, which was inconsistent with his earlier focus on integration within
the ‘civilised’ world found on the pages of The Philadelphia Negro. Du Bois’
(1934) response to this was clear; 1934 was not 1910. In the intervening years
white America had increasingly shut its doors to black America. No longer
could black academics, like Du Bois, get jobs at mainstream universities, stay in
some hotels, attend certain restaurants or visit various spaces. Segregation had
actually increased in the first decades of the twentieth century, as the NAACP
had found in its protests about the army. More problematically, lynching and
other forms of violence remained a fact of life. In such situations, for Du Bois,
the slogan ‘no segregation’ had increasingly been used as a way for more highly
educated African-Americans to seek re-entry into privileged spaces rather than
a wider strategy of equality (Du Bois 1934:1244). Meanwhile, white America
continued to cut off interaction with their black counterparts beyond the most
basic level needed. There was only one response to such behaviour:
When my room-mate gets too noisy and dirty, I leave him; when my
neighbours get too annoying and insulting I seek another home; when
white Americans refuse to treat me as a man, I will cut my intercourse
with white Americans to the minimum demanded by decent living. (Du
Bois 1934:1248)
For Du Bois, his critics accused him of wanting to create segregation when
in fact this was already there. Therefore his second alternative, while being a
programme of segregation, was justified since ‘we are now segregated largely
without reason. Let us put reason and power beneath this segregation’ (Du Bois
1984:215). It takes both sides to end segregation and, if one side was unwill-
ing to do so, the only response was to seek to work within segregated barriers.
This was the moral of the split in class affinities along the colour line during the
reconstruction era and it was the story of the early twentieth century. While Du
Bois’ alternative ultimately is one for all of society – hence its ‘teaching a lesson’
to the world – in the interim segregated tactics were required.
76 sociAl thEoRy foR AltERnAtivE sociEtiEs
Following the end of World War II Du Bois’ thought would take a further shift.
He remained a significant public figure, for example, running for the US Sen-
ate in 1950 on a Progressive Party ticket and gaining 224,599 votes (DeMarco
1983:181). He also became chairman of the Peace Information Centre (PIC),
which was an organisation designed to campaign against the spread of nuclear
weapons and uphold the principles of peace post-World War II. It also led Du
Bois to write:
Thus it is clear today that the salvation of American Negroes lies in social-
ism. They should support all measures and men who favour the welfare
state; they should vote for government ownership of capital in industry;
they should favour strict regulation of corporations or their public own-
ership; they should vote to prevent monopoly from controlling the press
and the publishing of opinions. They should favour public ownership and
control of water, electric, and atomic power; they should stand for a clean
ballot, the encouragement of third parties, independent candidates, and
the elimination of graft and gambling on television and even in church.
(Du Bois 1958a:190–1)
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A BlAck RADicAl AltERnAtivE 77
we are lying, stealing and killing. We call this by finer names: Advertising, Free
Enterprise, and National Defence’ (Du Bois 1958b:1111). The silence of the
NAACP concerning Du Bois’ trial convinced him that in fact, unlike the sugges-
tion of his second alternative, many African-Americans were invested in main-
taining, rather than ending, capitalism (DeMarco 1983:160 ff.). Therefore, the
‘universal class’ of the proletariat who act in the interest of African-Americans
by bringing socialism into being was a suitable ideal. Not only was this appeal-
ing but was inevitable. As Du Bois put it on his nineteenth birthday:
This path would eventually lead Du Bois to becoming a member of the Com-
munist Party of the US in 1961, just as he was to leave the country in order to
live in Ghana and work on an Encyclopedia Africana. He would die just two
years later.
We have seen that Du Bois’ critique and alternative takes ethnic inequality as
its focus. For him racism plays out at the everyday level, through living ‘within
the veil’ which ensures a double consciousness for those who live behind the
colour line. In an era where forms of ethnic-based inequalities, racial violence
and everyday forms of racism remain, Du Bois’ work still has valuable points
to make (Smith 2015). His early critique linked this to the limited vocational
education available to black people at the time. The expansion of ‘Negro Acad-
emies’ would remove this and allow for entry into the ‘civilisation’ built up in
America. It was events, most notably the brutal lynching of Sam Hose, which
convinced Du Bois that knowledge was not enough and inspired his move into
activism and, later, his emphasis on economics. Here Du Bois’ critique saw the
position of African-Americans as linked to the legacy of slavery and the desire
to create a class of black labourers, upon which the Southern bourgeoisie could
become rich. This meant racism had an economic base and, inspired by the lack
of cross-ethnicity class solidarity of the reconstruction era, Du Bois advocated
a form of economic segregation. Here, the formation of cooperatives would
allow wealth to remain within the black community. These cooperatives were
also meant to show a path beyond capitalism, which Du Bois saw as coming
to an end. It was this which led to his becoming a member of the Communist
Party just before his death.
Whether Du Bois’ alternative would solve the problems of ethnic inequality
depends on the nature of the critique offered. If we accept Du Bois’ first critique
78 sociAl thEoRy foR AltERnAtivE sociEtiEs
that racism was due to the ignorance on both sides of the colour line, then the
expanded education of the ‘Negro Academies’ was an effective solution. His
cooperatives however were an unnecessary and potential dangerous attempt to
cut off economic activity without the knowledge and wealth to sustain it. But if
we accept Du Bois’ second critique, that segregation was a fact of the twentieth
century and was largely used to maintain a class of black labourers for capital’s
benefit, then his first alternative is largely pointless and instead a more socialist
alternative is required. As we shall see again in chapters to come, to speak of
what the alternative is for, whether that be racial equality, democracy or cosmo-
politanism, is opaque without an idea of what the problem actually is. Du Bois’
life, expressed in a social theory which utilises different critiques, and therefore
alternatives, demonstrates this well.
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George Herbert Mead and
Karl Mannheim: Sociology
and Democracy 5
The previous three chapters have outlined some of the earliest sociological
alternatives provided by one theorist or, in the case of Marx and Engels, two
working together. The next four chapters consider broad themes common to
particular alternatives and discuss how two, or more, writers have approached
them. We shall begin by considering the theme of democracy in the work of
George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) and Karl Mannheim (1893–1947).
It is common to hear it argued that sociology and democracy are tied together.
In Chapter 10, we shall see that this is a key justification for the idea of public
sociology. Such a link can also be found in C. Wright Mills’ claim that ‘the
political role of social science … is relevant to the extent to which democracy
prevails … we are trying to make society more democratic’ (Mills 1959:189).
Sociology is a ‘means to democracy’ since it gives ‘an understanding of the social
forces involved in the democratizing of society’ (Sanderson 1943:7). There are
many explanations given for this link. A common one is akin to Bauman’s
claims for sociology as critical discussed in Chapter 1. Here sociology is seen
to make us aware of the limits placed on our activities. By being aware of this
we can critique the actions of politics: to what extent do laws prejudice against
certain groups? Is it possible to have an equal say in the democratic process?
Is power used legitimately? and so on. This is perhaps an explanation for why
non-democratic states may greatly limit, or even ban, sociological study, such
as the Communist Poland from which Bauman was exiled (Walaszek 1977). It
may also help explain why, in attempting to secure government recognition and
funding, sociologists emphasise their democratic credentials, as was the case in
Sweden (Larsson and Magdalenić 2015).
However, ‘democracy’ is a very broad category with many competing con-
ception of what its right form, and ultimate value, is (Held 2006). Our cur-
rent form of representative, or liberal, democracy is different from the more
direct form favoured in Du Bois’ cooperatives for example. Therefore, this
chapter considers in more depth how sociology has developed ways for society
to become more democratic. As we shall see, the alternatives offered by Mead
and Mannheim are markedly different, reflecting not only different national
and historical contexts but ideas of how sociologists should offer alterna-
tives. In doing so, they also demonstrate conflicting ideas of what it means
for society to be democratic. It is these contrasting ideas which make them
ideal for our discussion. This chapter could have considered further the link
Mills drew between sociology and democracy, Carole Pateman’s (1988) work
79
80 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
on the ‘sexual contract’ at the heart of liberal democracy and therefore how
new forms of participation would allow for a more democratic society or Paul
Hirst’s (1994) use of a sociological critique as the basis for his ‘associative
democracy’. But the value of discussing Mead and Mannheim is their opening
up of two discussions. Firstly, they offer diametrically opposed ideas of how to
develop democracy, as either a ‘bottom-up’ process engendered by creating eve-
ryday forms of participation and expression or a ‘top-down’ process in which
enlightened experts create the conditions for what they conceive a democratic
society to be. Secondly, and leading on from this, they demonstrate two distinct
ways in which sociologists can assist in this process. Consequently, this com-
parison allows us to make broader points concerning the role of sociologists
in offering alternatives. I will consider Mead and Mannheim separately before
returning to these differences in the final section.
Mead was born in 1863 in Massachusetts; his father was a protestant clergy-
man, just like his grandfather. He attended Oberlin College, which employed
his father and provided training for evangelical clergymen-to-be with a strong
focus on working in the community (Shalin 1988:915). Upon graduating, and
having lost his faith, Mead spent a year at Harvard before travelling, primar-
ily to do the doctorate he never completed, to Germany. Here, as we shall see
below, he was inspired by the work of the German Social Democratic Party
(SPD). Returning to America he was appointed to a position in the philosophy
department at the University of Chicago, where he stayed until just before
his death in 1931 (Joas 1997:15–32). At Chicago Mead combined with his
friend and colleague John Dewey to develop American ‘pragmatist’ philoso-
phy. This means that he never identified as a sociologist and, despite claims
to the contrary, had very little interaction with, or impact upon, the burgeon-
ing ‘Chicago School’ of sociology (Fisher and Strauss 1979) and would only
come to be considered a sociologist after his death (Huebner 2014). Never-
theless, Mead’s philosophy had a strong sociological focus, based within his
concept of the ‘social self’ (Mead 1913). This would be central to the school of
symbolic interactionist sociology, partly founded by one of Mead’s students,
Herbert Blumer (1969). It is Mead’s concept of the social self from which we
must begin to understand his wider critique and alternative since, as Silva
puts it, Mead ‘mobilizes the conceptual apparatus of his social psychology in
order to put forth a scientific analysis of political and moral phenomena’ (Silva
2007a:292). This concept of the social self has had a variety of readings over
time (see Silva 2007b:91–115). In what follows I will utilise a sociological
reading rather than the more philosophical reading of, for example, Habermas
(Silva 2007b:95–101).
Mead argues our self, our sense of who we are, is inherently social. In order to
become aware of ourselves as somehow ‘unique’ – as Mead terms it, ourselves
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 81
‘as a subject’ – we need to act and think with reference to others, partly so we
can differentiate ourselves from them. As he suggests:
Based upon this Mead argues our self contains two components: the ‘I’ and
the ‘me’. The ‘I’ is made up of what Mead terms ‘reflective thought’ (Mead
1934:201) and is individual. This is our conception of our self and our activity –
how we think about ourselves, the things we do and our individual desires.
Importantly this is not done as isolated activity but rather is a ‘response of
the individual to the attitude of the community’ (Mead 1934:196). The ‘me’
however is outside the individual and is part of this ‘community’ as the ‘organ-
ized set of attitudes of others’ (Mead 1934:194). This is the norms, values and
social conceptions that go along with our role. Both of these, the I and the me,
combine to make the self, meaning we are both aware of and react in response
to social demands and interests.
To provide an example, Mead compares the I and the me to playing a team
game. When we do so we act in line with a set of rules and the responses of
our teammates. Therefore, the activities of the I, say in throwing the ball to my
teammate, always occur with reference to the me – do the rules allow me to
throw the ball, has my teammate called for it and so on (Mead 1934:173–8).
As a player of the game both of these elements determine my action and
demand my being aware of the expectations of others. To act purely as an ‘I’
would mean doing what I want without reference to the rules and my team-
mates. Acting purely as a me would mean I would be paralysed by inactivity,
not knowing whether to throw or keep the ball; the rules allow both, but the
I makes the decision. The same process for Mead can be seen in the family,
the child develops their sense of self by both identifying with the family (the
me) and by positioning him/herself as a unique member of that family (the I)
(Mead 1934:368–73). Here, my sense of myself as the ‘child’ of the family is
partly about my own reflection and activity, but this only occurs with reference
to the expectations of others concerning what being ‘the child’ demands. Doing
this requires us to develop a sense of what Mead terms the ‘generalised other’
or being able to take the position of others in our community and understand
what our role commands (Mead 1934:154). What makes up this community
changes (family, teammates and so on) but Mead argues this should be a broad
community over the life course as we become aware of different interests and
requirements (Mead 1934:202).
Therefore, our community is central, providing as it does our sense of self
and directing our action through the generalised other. For this to happen we
must enter into communication with others. This is where democracy is useful
82 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
This very attitude, however, of putting one’s self in the other man’s shoes
brings with it not only the stimulus to assist him, but also a judgment
upon that situation … One cannot assume the role of the wretched with-
out considering under what conditions the wretchedness can or may be
avoided … The step from this attitude to the idea of social conditions
under which this evil would not exist is inevitable. (Mead 1930:398)
For this ideal democracy to function its institutions must form what Mead
terms ‘social habits’ whereby individuals will habitually and automatically
take the position of the wider community (Mead 1936:33–4). This includes
encouraging ‘social’ against ‘asocial’ activity. The former involves acting with
reference to others and expanding our me, the latter purely with reference to
our I (Mead 1934:317–28). Unfortunately, democracy as currently constituted
encourages asocial against social habits thereby furthering self-interest and
decreasing our sense of community. Mead provides three examples of such aso-
cial habits. The first concerns nationalism and war. By seeing nation states as
the ‘external authority’ over individuals (Mead 2011:87) they become the body
which can legitimate war and demand obedience (Mead 2011). This for Mead
was central to World War I, where the power interest of states created a situa-
tion whereby individuals were dragged into a war with an appeal to patriotic
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 83
in democracy. We are reduced simply to casting a vote every few years and
following the decision of ‘leaders’. Consequently, there is little possibility for
us to have a direct influence on events in our daily lives. The result of this is
that individuals are left to act as part of what Mead terms the ‘mob’; petitions
and public debates in which the target of the mob is always ‘some hated object
of the group’, such as immigrants (Mead 1934:221). Therefore, division and a
lack of communication are furthered and the problems of personality democ-
racy are exacerbated. This then limits our opportunities to take the position of
others and, following Mead’s earlier comment, limits our potential to realise
the ‘evils’ and ‘wretchedness’ which plague others’ lives.
Mead contrasts this form of personality democracy with his alternative:
rational democracy, to which we now turn.
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 85
Therefore, to discover what things should look like, it is essential to see what
they do look like and come up with practical ideas to solve problems in the
here and now. Mead encouraged those interested in social change to realise that
‘there is nothing so interesting as human life if you can become an understand-
ing part of it’ (Mead 1907–8:110) and to conceive of alternatives as responses
to problems of the status quo. This is what Mead terms ‘scientific’ or ‘intelligent’
reform, since science provides a clear idea of how change should be conducted:
the experimental method (Mead 1938). Once the problem is identified we can
develop working hypotheses as to what causes it and how changes in institu-
tions, carried out as experiments, could remove it (Mead 1899a). Constructing
such experiments was Mead’s goal throughout his life. There are five particular
experiments which demonstrate his goal of encouraging a rational democracy.
The first of these was Hull House. This was an example of a wider trend
towards ‘social settlements’ in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century
(Addams 1910). These settlements were founded on the idea of placing social
workers within the communities they serve and Chicago was home to many.
Hull House contained social workers as well as communal spaces where locals
could meet and plan events or seek help. The location of the settlement was
central since, as Mead put it:
The corner stone of settlement theory has been that the residents have
identified themselves with the immediate portion of the community where
their work is found by making their home there. It is upon this founda-
tion that the further characteristics of settlement theory and practice have
been built. It is this foundation that makes the settlement an institution
which distinguishes it from either the church or the university. (Mead
1907–8:108)
As this indicates, rather than having social workers disconnected from their
client’s lives, social settlements ensure they are part of their community. To
put it in the terms of Mead, their ‘me’ is located with the people they are try-
ing to help. This means that they do not enter the community from outside
to condemn or praise but rather become fully aware of how those they help
live their lives and the pressures they face. This means that Hull House was
primarily concerned with ‘finding out what the evils are; not in enforcing per-
formed moral judgements’ (Mead 1907–8:110). This was a central element of
86 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
Mead’s conception of democracy since, as Cook puts it, it allowed the social
workers to achieve ‘neighbourhood consciousness’ whereby ‘instead of falling
back upon preformed moral judgements settlement workers embraced a strat-
egy of open-minded inquiry to arrive at new moral judgements’ so that they
‘might correctly identify the problems of that community’ and ‘work toward
their solution’ (Cook 1993:101). It is a localised form of the scientific reform
and rational democracy Mead favoured. While Jane Addams was the main
figure in establishing Hull House (Deegan 2013) Mead was for a long time
the treasurer and a frequent visitor, including giving lectures. He also served
on its board of directors for fourteen years, operated as chief fund-raiser and
helped carry out surveys on the needs of the community (Cook 1993:99–103,
Joas 1997:22).
A second activity concerned the City Club. This was a group of intellectuals
and businessmen who used their influence with local politicians to advance
such agendas as ‘the political participation of immigrants, the democratization
of urban planning, and the reform of municipal health services and of voca-
tional training’ (Joas 1997:23). Mead joined the club in 1906 and remained a
member until his death, during which time he held multiple positions. Most
prominently, Mead was chairman of committee of education. This meant that
Mead engaged in varied activities including successfully petitioning the Chicago
Board of Education to ensure better pay and conditions for teachers, securing
funding for vocational education in the state and developing surveys to track
variations in student achievement across the city. Mead was president of the
club from 1918 to 1920 and used this position to lobby senators to support the
ultimately forlorn proposal for US membership of the League of Nations (Cook
1993:105–8). Again here, we see Mead attempting to use sociological knowl-
edge to respond to specific problems emerging in the everyday life of the city.
The third activity was the Immigrants’ Protective League. As highlighted
above, Mead saw the treatment of immigrants in Chicago as a major problem,
which led him to co-found, and from 1909 to 1919 serve as vice-president of,
this organisation. The League set up its office across the street from the train
station and ensured its workers were there when immigrants arrived, helping
them avoid overcharging cab drivers and getting them safely to new homes.
From there, League workers maintained contact with new arrivals helping
them find jobs, seek education or navigate the city’s complex social welfare
systems. It also attempted to protect young women who were victims of human
trafficking for prostitution (Cook 1993:104). The League also, much like the
City Club, lobbied local government and had some success in forcing the city
to establish immigration bureaus and clamp down on unscrupulous employ-
ers (Cook 1993:104–5). Here we see an example of Mead’s scientific reform
where a specific issue – the condition of immigrants and how democracy had
treated them as outsiders – led to conceptions of an alternative experiment. The
League was an example of intelligent reform and the establishment of immi-
gration bureaus in the state, similar to the work of the League, demonstrated
its success.
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 87
The fourth activity was strike arbitration. As we saw above, Mead hypoth-
esised that labour conflicts were due to a lack of democratic communication
mechanisms, such as arbitrators, between the conflicting bodies of capital and
labour (Mead 1934:323). In October 1910 he was able to test this hypothesis
when a strike began at the Chicago firm of Hart, Schaffer and Marx, a cloth-
ing manufacture. Before long roughly 40,000 garment workers were on strike
across the city, protesting primarily against law wages and poor working condi-
tions. At a meeting of Hull House, Mead was made chairman of a five-person
committee to seek an end to the strike. The committee interviewed workers and
employers, discovering a great deal of truth to the worker’s claims (for example
a blacklist used by employers to discriminate against union activists). Mead
then spent many weeks encouraging both sides to enter into arbitration. They
were unwilling to pursue this initially but eventually agreed and in January
1911 representatives for both sides reached an agreement (Deegan and Berger
1978:365–8). As we have seen, Mead believed alternatives emerged as hypoth-
eses for scientific reform in response to the identification of specific problems;
therefore:
communication in the same way as their peers, it was in fact ‘a pragmatic step
to aid the handicapped [sic] in constructing a social self’ (Deegan and Berger
1978:365).
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 89
Whether [Mead] was marching with Jane Addams on the streets of Chi-
cago in support of women’s suffrage, surveying the homes of immigrants
from eastern Europe, writing editorials on the dispute between the Board
of Education and the Chicago Teachers’ Federation, giving public support
to the beleaguered reformers at the University of Wisconsin, or serving
on the citizens’ committee investigating labour grievances in the Chicago
garment workers’ strike he was doing exactly what he thought a mem-
ber of the public should do to stay politically engaged and to further the
cause of reform. (Shalin 1988:936)
It is this lesson to take from Mead’s sociological alternative. His view as a soci-
ologist led him to realise the issues in his critique more clearly, and his skills put
him in a better place to conduct experiments. But his ideal rational democracy
was ultimately one in which every individual ‘can express himself … as the
scientist does’ and allow for the ‘genius’ in everyone to be expressed (Mead
1934:221). In short, the extension of democracy in its rational form means eve-
ryone can engage in the process of critique, hypothesis and experiment which
make up Mead’s sociological alternative. This is Mead’s link of sociology and
democracy.
We shall return to why this is so important to Mead in the conclusion. Before
then, let us turn to Mannheim.
Karl Mannheim
Mannheim was born in Budapest in 1893 and was to live a life of exile. Dur-
ing his time at university Mannheim became friends with the Marxist Georg
Lukács, even becoming part of what was informally termed the ‘Lukács group’
(Remmling 1975:15). This association was to prove fateful since members of
90 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
the group played a key role in the Hungarian Communist party’s declaration
of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Mannheim himself took
no part in these events, partly due to his ambivalent relationship to Marxism
(Remmling 1975:14), but became linked to them in the eyes of others (Kettler
and Meja 1988:626). With the crushing of the Soviet, Mannheim was forced to
flee to Germany, eventually arriving in Heidelberg. He would spend ten years
here followed by three at the University of Frankfurt. This period was Man-
nheim’s most productive, including publication of the text for which he became
known, Ideology and Utopia (Mannheim 1936). However, despite his German
mother, Mannheim was always marked as a figure of suspicion by the German
authorities. He lacked German citizenship and, more significantly, was Jewish.
With the rise of Nazism, Mannheim was forced to flee once more, seeking secu-
rity in Britain at the London School of Economics (LSE), following an invite
by the famed political scientist, Harold Laski, as a lecturer in the sociology
department (Kettler et al. 1984:11). The LSE was not to be a happy home for
Mannheim. Although able to write English well, his spoken English was poor
(Kudomi 1996:48). He also continually clashed both intellectually and person-
ally with the only Professor of Sociology at the time, Morris Ginsberg, so much
so that their clashes were later immortalised as the ‘Mannheim-Ginsberg prob-
lem’ (Dahrendorf 1995:295). Relationships were so poisonous that, despite his
international acclaim, Mannheim was only ever to hold a junior post at the LSE
(Kudomi 1996:48, 51–2). Although physically safe Mannheim was, in effect,
still exiled, this time from what he saw as the ‘untheoretical empiricism’ of
British sociology (Kettler et al. 1984:120) so much so that in 1946 he left to
become a professor at London’s Institute of Education. He died less than a year
later of a suspected heart attack (Kudomi 1996:52). It is a sign of the extent of
the animosity between Mannheim and Ginsberg that, after Mannheim’s death,
his wife greeted the visiting American sociologist Edward Shils with the words
‘Ginsberg killed him’ (Shils 1997:217).
This life of exile is particularly relevant in the case of Mannheim since his
sociological alternative, constructed during his time in London, is a direct
response to the regimes which had forced him to flee. This means we need to
attach an extra caveat to Mannheim’s alternative as not a ‘universal prescrip-
tion but one of limited time and space, in this case postwar Britain’ (Loader
1985:175). Nonetheless, it remains interesting as a way in which, contrary to
Mead, the link of sociology and democracy can be conceived as a project of
social reconstruction led not by lay actors but by intellectual elites. Sociology
was helpful since the key problem was a ‘lack of a comprehensive sociological
orientation’ (Mannheim 1943:61) held by such elites.
As Kettler et al. (1984:80–128) outline, Mannheim conceived of the sociolo-
gist as a ‘socio-analyst’ who, like their psychoanalyst kin, distinguishes between
‘pathological and healthy states’ (Kettler et al. 1984:81), with the exception that
the socio-analyst is not diagnosing individuals but rather societies. While simi-
lar in language to Durkheim’s work, Mannheim has a much wider conception
of what happens in a pathological society since this influences the ‘development
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 91
Let us take the attitude of a doctor who tries to give a scientific diagnosis
of the illness from which we suffer. There is no doubt that our society has
been taken ill. What is the disease, and what could be its cure? If I had to
summarize the situation in a single sentence I would say: ‘We are living
in an age of transition from laissez-fair to a planned society. The planned
society that will come may take one of two shapes: it will be ruled either
by a minority in terms of a dictatorship or by a new form of government
which, in spite of its increased power, will still be democratically con-
trolled.’ (Mannheim 1943:1)
It is this illness, and Mannheim’s attempt to cure it, which provides the basis of
his critique and alternative.
behaviour and ideals of the good life’ (Mannheim 1951:21). However, religion
has lost its ability to do this with the shift away from small groups of homog-
enous feudal units to the city-based and pluralised capitalism of ‘mass society’.
Mass society or, as Mannheim sometimes terms it, ‘Great society’ (Mannheim
1943, 1951) is any society which is large and governed as such – ‘British’ or
‘American’ society are governed by national governments rather than local
groups – and in which we find a division of labour. Therefore, mass society
was the kind of society which had become dominant in modern times with
the increased power of nation states and the division of labour. Any mass soci-
ety automatically created the need for what Mannheim termed ‘social tech-
niques’ which are ‘those methods which aim at influencing human behaviour
and which, when in the hands of the Government, act as an especially powerful
means of social control’ (Mannheim 1943:1). For example, mass society must
have bodies such as the police to maintain order, social workers to deal with
any social problems, an education system to train people for work and com-
munication networks to maintain contact throughout society. These not only
allow society to function but also influence our behaviour and actions either
directly or via socialisation. It is for this reason that Mannheim adopts a very
broad definition of social techniques, including all of the above examples as
well as transport networks, radio programming and the army; all of these influ-
ence our behaviour, making some actions more likely than others and change
how we act (Mannheim 1943:1–4).
Therefore any mass society has social techniques at its hands, which gov-
ernments can use to ‘produce orderly patterns of human interaction subject
to norms, codes and rules’ (Mannheim 1951:48). These are ‘neither good
nor bad’ in themselves but rather their worth depends on how they’re used
(Mannheim 1938:277). Social techniques will, as Mannheim puts it, ‘manipu-
late’ (Mannheim 1951:46) society automatically – education will socialise indi-
viduals into certain values, the media will reproduce such values and the police
will punish with reference to laws – how this is done is decided by the priorities
of governments. It is here that laissez-faire becomes problematic for Mannheim
since, with its liberal ethos, such a system places its faith in the individual and
their choices. This means being unwilling to outline common values due to
the belief that to do so would force conformity among a diverse population
(Mannheim 1943:26). This leads to what Mannheim terms a ‘crisis in valua-
tion’ where, lacking common values to direct social techniques, they become
‘society-blind’ (Mannheim 1943:17), operating without reference to any wider
conception of right and wrong. As an example, Mannheim turns to education:
we have no agreed educational policy for our normal citizens, since the
further we progress the less we know what we are educating for. On the
primary levels of education we are undecided whether to aim at creating
millions of rationalists who discard custom and tradition and judge each
case on its merits, or whether the chief aim of education should be hand-
ing on of that social and national inheritance which is focused on religion.
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 93
Mannheim was not the first or only person to use the term ‘The Third Way’;
we shall see it again in Chapter 8 with the work of Giddens and it has a long
history within sociology (Eldridge 2000). However, in Mannheim’s hands, it
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 95
A reconstructed ruling class must first vitalize and define, at least as clearly
as any totalitarian ruling class, the principles and objectives of democracy
in industrial society. Secondly, it must devise practicable ways and means
to attain its ends by reforms and mass consensus. (Mannheim 1951:106)
Mannheim argued that much of the current forms of training for the ruling
class available in Britain (especially the leading universities of Oxford and
Cambridge or ‘Oxbridge’) were effective. These schools were a ‘skilful socio-
logical product’ which had allowed Britain to rule both an empire and its own
land (Mannheim 1951:99). The only problem with the system for Mannheim
was it was closed off, with only a small number of families able to send their
children to Oxbridge. Therefore a militant democracy will encourage openness
and recruitment to Oxbridge as well as the ‘best’ boarding schools. If there
are too many applicants and ‘dilution’ becomes a problem then new board-
ing schools and universities should be established upon this model (Mannheim
1951:102–3). Importantly though, for Mannheim, it is better to err on the side
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 97
While Mead and Mannheim share the view that a goal of sociology is to make
society more democratic they offer differing alternatives to obtain this. There
are some similarities in how they hope to achieve this. For example, Mead’s
98 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
This role exists due to the emergence of modern nation states committed to
‘remaking’ society according to particular ideals (Bauman 1987:52). Intellectu-
als were to use the resources of the nation state, especially education, in order to
implement such ideals. This relied upon a particular conception of individuals:
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GeorGe herberT Mead and Karl MannheiM: SocioloGy and deMocracy 99
We have seen this role perfectly in the work of Mannheim. His alternative is
based on intellectuals using the nation state to create a new order. This can be
achieved since it sees individuals as manipulated by social techniques, particu-
larly education, in order to produce the ideal end state. This also assumes Man-
nheim, as an intellectual, has a unique and authoritative view on the world and
can provide answers to its problems.
We see the opposite in the role of the interpreter. Rather than seeking to
make universal statements as laws the interpreter role:
Found most prominently, though not solely, in post or liquid modern times
(Bauman 1987:5) the interpreter acts as a conduit between intellectual knowl-
edge and the lay masses. Since, unlike the legislator, the interpreter thinks that
individuals are intelligent and able to change their activity freely in light of
new evidence, they engage in a conversation in order to translate sociologi-
cal findings into everyday concerns (Bauman and Welzer 2002:110). If these
ideas then go on to change society in some way it was a result of convincing
lay individuals that sociology ‘renders or may render to the struggle waged by
the humans to comprehend, “to make sense of”, their life experience’ (Bauman
2008:237–8).
Mead was effectively an early adopter of the interpreter role. The whole
purpose of his alternative was to use sociological insights to allow people on
an everyday level to have a wider and more social view of their self and their
actions. In doing so Mead hoped to awaken the ‘genius’ within everyone rather
than seeing one group as especially privileged in constructing democracy (Mead
1934:202–17). This inevitably led Mead out onto the streets and into collabo-
ration with these lay members whereas Mannheim’s legislator role inevitably
led him to turn to the state and the hope of providing universal laws.
For Bauman, neither of these roles is intrinsically ‘better’ than the other; this
will depend rather on one’s wider sociological viewpoint and values (Bauman
1987:6), although Bauman links himself decisively to the interpreter role
(Bauman 2008:237). In the ‘Conclusion’ I will return to this distinction and
discuss how many theorists have chosen one or the other of these strategies.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, just like in this discussion of democracy, such strategies
produce markedly different alternatives.
Henri Lefebvre and Herbert
Marcuse: Neo-Marxist
Alternatives
As we saw in Chapter 2, Marx and Engels were dismissive of those who
6
engaged in the ‘utopian’ activity of outlining alternatives, despite their own
occasional dabbling in doing so. Many Marxists followed this advice, including
many of the key thinkers in what would become known as ‘neo’ or ‘Western’
Marxism such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Georg Lukács and Louis
Althusser. But some, to a certain extent, crafted sociological alternatives. There
were multiple reasons for this, including the emergence of a form of socialism
in the Soviet Union and elsewhere with which many Marxists disagreed. This
encouraged Marxists to outline what socialism is if it was not that form being
practised in the USSR. This was not a worry for their predecessors who could
almost revel in not knowing what socialism was since it was the job of the
revolutionary proletariat to figure this out (Sassoon 2010:1–30). The Marxist
psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900–80) was an example of this with his outlin-
ing of what a ‘sane’ society would be (Fromm 1956, Durkin 2014).
However, in this chapter, we will discuss the work of two other prominent
neo-Marxists: Henri Lefebvre (1901–91) and Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979).
Both reflect a shift in twentieth-century Marxism towards a greater focus on
culture alongside the materialist concerns of Marx and Engels (Adorno 1991).
Nevertheless, they remain Marxists, ensuring that while there is an alternative
for us to discuss, it is still one which is perhaps less specific than those which we
have seen, and will see, from theorists representing other perspectives.
Lefebvre and Marcuse placed a great deal of emphasis on two changes which
had emerged in the mid-twentieth century. The first of these concerned pro-
tests and, more specifically, who was protesting. Whereas classical Marxism
had understood protests as related to class conflict, such as the long history
of protests for citizenship rights (Giddens 1982), the 1960s saw the increased
prominence of seemingly non-class-based protests. Causes included civil rights
in the US, liberation movements in the Third World, environmentalism, gay
pride and feminism. Some ecologically minded Marxists saw a potential for
ecological movements – who recognised an innate contradiction of capitalism
in its use of resources without reference to nature limits – to push forward the
transition to socialism (O’Connor 1996). Others drew inspiration from the
protests which erupted in May 1968 throughout Europe, most prominently in
France. These were based not solely on inequality but on a broader notion of
personal freedom. It was the central group behind such protests, students, who
especially inspired Marcuse. Their slogans of ‘give us what we want and we’ll
100
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 101
demand more’ or ‘be realistic, demand the impossible’ were music to the ears
of Marxists searching for groups who would demand an alternative and act
upon such a demand, given the seeming inability or reluctance of the working
class to do so. Continued forms of student protest – against tuition fees and in
response to unrest with the education system and government corruption – are
contemporary forms of the protests which are especially important to Marcuse.
The second factor is advertising, which is part of the wider changes in desire
produced by ‘advanced’ capitalism (Marcuse 1964). As we saw in Chapter 2,
Marx and Engels thought capitalism was wasteful since it produced without
reference to need and consequently had a tendency towards overproduction.
One way in which capitalism could be said to overcome this problem is via
advertising and producing a desire for new goods. We may not need the new
goods produced by capitalism but this doesn’t mean we don’t want them.
Advertising helps to generate this desire and want, making it seem like a need.
A good example can be seen in the advertising campaign for iPhones where the
iPhone 4 arrived with the advertising slogan ‘This Changes Everything. Again’,
while the iPhone 5 proclaimed it was ‘the best thing to happen to iPhone since
iPhone’. Here the features of the phone are less significant than the fact it is new
and, more importantly, was replaced by an iPhone 6 which made the iPhone 5
redundant, which itself had made version 4 obsolete. As Bauman puts it, a
society driven by advertising and consumption is one where ‘wanting, desire
and longing’ become key characteristics of our daily lives (Bauman 2007a:28).
It is these desires, and the way consumer capitalism produces them, which so
worried, yet also inspired, Lefebvre and Marcuse.
Therefore, part of the reason this chapter is focused on Lefebvre and Mar-
cuse is their shared historical context, as responding to the changing conditions
of consumer capitalism and the ‘New Left’ of the 1960s. In doing so, they also
highlight different conceptions of Marxism and its relation to social change. As
we shall see, while Lefebvre maintains the Marxist faith in the proletariat and
the Leninist creed of the state ‘withering away’, Marcuse turns his attention to
the new political groupings created by consumer capitalism. From here they
draw different images of the eventual socialist society to replace capitalism.
Consequently, these writers remind us how sharing a theoretical school and
intellectual project does not mean sharing the same image of the ideal society.
Henri Lefebvre
Lefebvre lived a long and eventful life. Born just outside the Pyrenees he moved
to Paris to pursue his education at the Sorbonne in 1920. A period of military
service and two years spent as a taxi driver gave him an unusual education
which was to mark out a man who was both a philosopher concerned with
the abstract and a sociologist concerned with the everyday (Harvey 1991:426).
He was quickly drawn to Marxism and became a member of the French Com-
munist Party (PCF) in 1928, a move which meant he was immediately expelled
102 sociaL tHeory for aLternative societies
from his teaching post once France was occupied in 1941. He spent the rest
of the war in the resistance, producing propaganda, sabotaging Nazi trains
and discovering collaborators (Elden 2004:3). With the allied victory Lefebvre
returned to work and swiftly became alienated from the Stalinism gripping the
PCF before being formally expelled in 1958. This expulsion meant Lefebvre
was ‘liberated from Stalinist constraints’ (Harvey 1991:428) and was free to
pursue a unique career spanning almost 70 years as a Marxist philosopher/
sociologist. He became famous for his work on the city in The Production of
Space (Lefebvre 1991a) but also wrote widely on the state, capitalism and a
three-volume Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre 1991b, 2002, 2005). Despite
his expulsion Lefebvre remained a committed Marxist and communist ‘of the
old school’ (Trebitsch 1991:xiii). He always sought to explain how capitalism
could be transcended and, following Lenin, the state could ‘wither away’ to be
replaced by forms of cooperation between free individuals (Lefebvre 1964a).
Lefebvre was eventually to find the answer in the theory of autogestion.
For Lefebvre, everyday life has been a neglected topic for sociology. Marx-
ist sociologists have too often favoured the ‘abstract’ – the grand structures
of political economy, the market, state and exploitation. While important,
such discussions have marginalised the lived experience of capitalism which,
for Lefebvre, was Marx’s original intention with concepts such as alienation
(Lefebvre 1991b:176–82). Meanwhile, the sociologists who actually studied
everyday life have not been critical about it since, by simply seeking to describe
everyday life, ‘one records, one ratified. Knowledge and acknowledgement go
hand in hand’ (Lefebvre 2005:4). This is troubling for Lefebvre since everyday
life should be a key topic for Marxist sociology. To demonstrate this he pro-
vides an example:
The everyday is significant for Lefebvre since it is the ‘meeting place’ (Lefebvre
2002:118–25) for all the social structures and inequalities which sociologists
study. While sociologists talk about ‘class’ or ‘gender roles’ as abstract things,
they have their impact and are felt by individuals at an everyday level. The
woman buying a bag of sugar becomes aware of her gender role when she is the
one expected to do the shopping and of her class when she realises she doesn’t
have the money to pay for it. Outside of this, for most non-sociologists such
concepts have an ‘aura of technicality’ (Lefebvre 1991b:89) which means they
are beyond lay consideration. Therefore, studying everyday life is, for Lefebvre,
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 103
to see how social processes actually ‘happen’. As the final sentence of the above
quote indicates, Lefebvre also wants to study everyday life in order to under-
stand society as a whole – what sociologists would now term linking the ‘micro’
elements of lived experience to the ‘macro’ structures of society. As a Marxist,
Lefebvre sees this as especially important since it allows us to grasp more fully
the workings of capitalism and, therefore, to critique it.
Using our earlier example, an iPhone is not a human need; one can live per-
fectly fine without one. But it could be said to be a social need since the role of
advertising is to convince us we do ‘need’ it, through appealing to our desire
for a new and exciting product. Therefore, advertising becomes an increas-
ingly important part of society with more and more of our everyday lives occu-
pied with seeing, and being the subjects of, marketing (Lefebvre 1988:79). The
introduction of new technologies which come to occupy our daily lives means
we are more easily reached by advertisers, from television adverts to electronic
billboards through to the personalised ‘just for you’ promotions popularised by
online retailers such as Amazon.com. We cannot escape marketing which ‘sur-
rounds’ and ‘besieges us’ (Lefebvre 2002:41) meaning the everyday is the area
in which our desires are ‘manipulated’ by marketing (Lefebvre 1988:79). This
has a pervasive effect where, rather than think of ourselves as ‘citizens’ of a
political community, we see ourselves as ‘users’ of economic services (Lefebvre
2002:78; 1990).
It is this change of the everyday that fundamentally alters the nature of
capitalism for Lefebvre. Rather than produce products for exchange capital-
ism now means that ‘the manufacturers of consumer goods do all they can to
manufacture consumers. To a large extent they succeed’ (Lefebvre 2002:10).
Therefore, the increased opportunities to advertise and thereby manufacture
desire for consumer goods means that everyday life becomes the ‘base’ of capi-
talism (Lefebvre 2005:41). To be more exact, it is everyday life which allows
capitalism to reproduce itself by ensuring a constant supply of customers and
therefore profit (Lefebvre 1988:79). This leads Lefebvre to categorise contem-
porary society as the ‘Bureaucratic Society of Controlled Consumption’ (Lefe-
bvre 1971) since it is this ability to control consumption via advertising which
ensures the success of capitalism. This is aided by the state which becomes
the ‘watchtower’ of capital and ensures the ‘ideology of continual growth’ is
secured (Lefebvre 1976a:111–20, 1995:121). Lefebvre argues this is equally
true of socialist countries which increasingly focused on economic growth and
consumption.
But Lefebvre is not solely a doomsayer since he argues everyday life gives
everyone the opportunity to engage in ‘the critique of the real by the possible’
(Lefebvre 1991b:9); it allows us to realise how everyday life is being manipu-
lated, how unequal we are and that another world is possible. There are three
ways in which this manifests itself.
Firstly, inequality. As we saw with the example of the woman buying a bag
of sugar, Lefebvre sees everyday life as the field in which inequality is experi-
enced; this is especially true in the bureaucratic society of controlled consump-
tion. Not all can purchase the wonderful consumer goods which we desire and
consequently there is a strict divide in our experience. As Lefebvre puts it, ‘The
upper bourgeoisie lives in the supra-everyday. (Onassis directed his fleet of oil
tankers from his yacht.) But hundreds of millions of poor people in the world
aspire to everyday life’ (Lefebvre 1988:79–80). Lefebvre terms this the ‘uneven
development’ of everyday life and sees its most extreme manifestation in the
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 105
fact that while an elite began to explore space millions were left going hungry
and working infertile land by hand (Lefebvre 2002:316). Therefore, inequality
expressed via class remains a central factor for Lefebvre (1968:102–3).
This then leads to the second point: inequality existing is not enough to create
critique, nor is inequality itself new; it is the fact that we increasingly become
aware of this inequality which is new. While the technologies of everyday life
may create greater inequality, they also increase knowledge. Due to the expan-
sion of media farmers working the land know that some fellow humans are
walking on the moon. We can increasingly see the life of the rich and famous
and compare it to our own, notably deprived in comparison. This is what Lefe-
bvre sees as us becoming globalized but only ‘as an eye, purely and simply’
(Lefebvre 2002:89). The large majority of people are simply left watching the
exploits of the rich and cannot help but realise the ‘gaps’ which exist between
the reality we live and the possible reality we could live (Lefebvre 2002:62–3).
Therefore, ‘rather than suppressing criticism of everyday life, modern techno-
logical progress realises it’ (Lefebvre 1991b:9). We immediately become aware
of issues of unfairness and injustice. Although he does not use the phrase, Lefe-
bvre’s argument is that the conditions of everyday life in advanced capitalism
are a spur towards class consciousness.
Finally, we do experience breaks in alienation within everyday life already,
returning us to the importance of leisure. As noted by Highmore (2002), Lefeb-
vre has a contradictory reaction to this; we have seen how he dismisses leisure
as time used primarily to ‘recharge our batteries’ to return to work, yet he also
argues that our leisure time is ‘other than everyday life’ (Lefebvre 1991b:40).
Leisure is the time in which we can remove ourselves from the demands, and
alienation, of consumer capitalism. This was especially so in the case of the
festival, or carnival. Throughout French history these involved whole towns
coming together to celebrate with plentiful food, wine, dancing and sports and
where, as Lefebvre matter-of-factly puts it, the days would end in ‘scuffles and
orgies’ (Lefebvre 1991b:202). While modern-day festivals may not be as care-
free as these Lefebvre sees the principle which animates them to have relevance.
We still see leisure as a time for rejecting the rules which govern our everyday
life; it is the time for ‘putting our hair down’ and trying some ‘escape attempts’
(Cohen and Taylor 1992), whether this be extreme sports, taking drugs, col-
lecting stamps or reading poetry. All of these, in different ways, seek to break
the routines and rules which govern our daily activity and escape from our
everyday life into something more exciting or creative, the realm of the ‘fabu-
lous’ (Lefebvre 1991b:40–58). Holidays also indicate this since ‘the true life
starts the moment we go away’ (Lefebvre 1995:90). Therefore, while most of
our everyday life is administered and manipulated, there are moments when we
are free from such demands, times which we relish. These escapes themselves
are not the alternatives but, by breaking the routines of alienated everyday life,
open up the potential for us to consider alternatives.
It is these three components – inequality between our everyday experience,
our increased knowledge of such inequality and the fact that we do experience
106 sociaL tHeory for aLternative societies
alternatives in our leisure – which mean that everyone potentially has their own
critique of everyday life (Lefebvre 1991b:29). We become aware of the ‘gaps’
between the possible and the real and, as this knowledge increases for Lefeb-
vre, it increases the possibility of praxis or, in Lefebvre’s terms, ‘total praxis’
which ‘is nothing other than the idea of revolution’ (Lefebvre 2005:241). This
is a revolution of thought since once we begin to think of capitalism as not
an inevitability but rather one option amongst many the ‘veil of ideology’ is
removed and ‘once ideology has been rendered conscious, it is powerless’ (Lefe-
bvre 1976a:119, 1995:91). Consequently, Lefebvre imagines a revolutionary
alternative emerging in the gaps of everyday life – or, as John Holloway (2010)
would later term them, the ‘cracks of capitalism’ – gaps we become increasingly
aware of, such as leisure spaces. It is the awareness of such gaps, rather than
what we currently fill the gaps with, which provides potential for new alterna-
tives emerging. The question for Lefebvre is ‘will you try to find the crack for
freedom to slip through, silently filling up the empty spaces, sliding through the
interstices? Good old freedom, you know it well’ (Lefebvre 1995:124). This
freedom for Lefebvre can be found in his sociological alternative: autogestion.
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 107
when not dictated to by the demands of capitalism; here we work freely with
others to achieve common goals.
For Lefebvre self-management should be conducted at the level of ‘enterprises,
units of production and branches of industry’ (Lefebvre 1976a:40). However,
beyond this Lefebvre leaves what a society based upon self-management would
look like unelaborated. The main reason for this is that Lefebvre sees autoges-
tion as a ‘principle’ to be followed rather than a fully sketched-out alternative
patiently waiting to be implemented (Lefebvre 1966:148). Indeed, he speaks of
self-management as having ‘nothing special about it’ and that it ‘has posed (and
still poses) as many problems as it solves’ (Lefebvre 1976a:120). Among these
questions are how self-management can occur without a state, whether it will
be co-opted by powerful figures (such as the Soviets after the Russian Revolu-
tion) and how this transition would occur (Lefebvre 1966). Indeed, the existing
evidence for self-management is mixed, with the sometimes rosy picture drawn
by some advocates complicated by the evidence (Warren 2001).
So one may ask, given this, why does Lefebvre place so much faith in
autogestion, including calling it the ‘theoretical essence of freedom’ (Lefebvre
1966:149)? The reason for this is how autogestion would be bought into being;
it is fundamentally a ‘bottom-up’ system (Lefebvre 1966). As we have seen,
Lefebvre sees the control and administration of everyday life to be his key point
of critique. Introducing self-management questions this and demonstrates that
a different way is possible. For example, Lefebvre (1976a:123) discusses how
institutions such as the post office are central to everyday life. These are run
either by the state or private capital – either way for Lefebvre they are placed
at the whim of capitalist demands for profit and the conditions of alienation.
Instead, an autogestion post office – occurring in the weak points of history
when the state or market is unable to provide (Lefebvre 1976a:123) – is based
upon individuals realising their shared needs and cooperating to produce a
system which allows for postal communication. Furthermore, introducing self-
management not focused on generating profit but rather on realising collective
needs into the post office is not simply concerned with removing alienation; it is
about demonstrating a more fundamental principle: if self-management works
here, it can work anywhere. If the post office can be self-managed, why not the
medical system? Or large corporations? Or community centres? Once the pos-
sibility of self-management is established in areas of social life then the edifice
of alienated consumer capitalism will, for Lefebvre, begin to crumble. This is
due to the aforementioned piercing of the veil of ideology where, for Lefebvre,
the notion of capitalist organisation is partly accepted due to its current domi-
nance. Demonstrating the possibility of an alternative way of organising and
running everyday institutions questions the need for institutions such as the
nation state and private property.
Autogestion also, as Elden (2004:226–31) notes, means that what Lefebvre
terms ‘the right to identity within difference’ as part of citizenship is accounted
for (Lefebvre 1990:252). Despite all being citizens and therefore having the
right to equality we also have our unique forms of difference (gender, age,
108 sociaL tHeory for aLternative societies
ethnicity, sexuality and so on) which must be recognised and accounted for;
thus we need to have equality with difference. For Lefebvre, allowing for self-
management and for different groups to, if needed, manage their own affairs
brings us one step closer to this.
Therefore, autogestion is as much a strategy to achieve an alternative as
much as it is the alternative itself; the alternative is guided by the principle of
autogestion. It also contributes to the ‘withering away’ of the state by demon-
strating other forms of control (Lefebvre 1966:150). Consequently, autogestion
is a theory of revolution – of individuals acting in a new way in their everyday
life (Lefebvre 2002:241). This revolutionary project ‘cannot just change the
political personnel of institutions; it must change la vie quotidienne’ (Lefebvre
1988:80). In doing so, it:
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 109
these suggestions largely remain ways to achieve change rather than the change.
This, after all, is to be decided by the revolutionary actors who engage in action
rather than a sociologist. As indicated above, Lefebvre was aware of the dif-
ficulties here and didn’t seek fully to resolve them, rather arguing that the pro-
cess of creating autogestion will throw up challenges and potential solutions.
While self-management occurs now, the fact it happens under alienated capital-
ism means it is not fully a guide to what could happen with a greater uptake
of autogestion and the piercing of the veil of ideology. The ‘new life’ which
guides such activity (Lefebvre 1995:65–94) is inevitably utopian; indeed
Lefebvre defends his theory of autogestion in this light:
Is this utopian? Yes, because utopian thought concerns what is and is not
possible. All thinking that had to do with action has a utopian element.
Ideals that stimulate action, such as liberty and happiness, must contain
a utopian element. This is not a refutation of such ideals; it is, rather, a
necessary condition of the project of changing life. (Lefebvre 1988:87)
Herbert Marcuse
Marcuse is united with Lefebvre not only via Marxism but also by having an
eventful life. Marcuse was born in 1898 to wealthy parents who were very
much of the ostentatious new bourgeoisie class; his mother’s family had made
their money from producing paper with gilded edges (Katz 1982:15–16). His
affluent upbringing was punctured by being drafted into the German army in
1916. But poor eyesight meant he never left Berlin. During this period Marcuse
joined the SDP and began his acquaintance with the work of Marx. With the
end of the war Marcuse turned to academia but, with the rise of Nazism, found
his academic career hindered due to his Judaism. In 1932 Marcuse joined the
Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt (the famed ‘Frankfurt School’) and
followed them into exile in the US in 1934. Marcuse spent the rest of his life in
the US, gaining citizenship in 1940. He worked for the precursor to the CIA in
World War II, providing intelligence on Germany and producing propaganda.
After the war he settled into an academic career. It was the 1960s, and the rise
of the ‘New Left’, which made Marcuse’s name. He influenced many activ-
ists through his teaching and writing, perhaps most prominently the radical
black activist Angela Davis (Hornstein 2009). In doing so, Marcuse began to
achieve a certain level of fame. He was denounced publically by Pope Paul VI
as opening ‘the way to licence cloaked as liberty’, by Pravda (the government-
controlled newspaper of the Soviet Union) as a ‘false prophet’ and by Ronald
Reagan as ‘not qualified to teach’ (Katz 1982:173–4). Indeed, things got so bad
that at one point Marcuse’s PhD students would guard his house at night in
light of death threats addressed to ‘Filthy Communist Anti-American Professor
110 sociaL tHeory for aLternative societies
While we might think that relaxing and having fun are human needs, for
Marcuse these reflect capitalist ends. We may relax by watching pricey DVD
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 111
For Marcuse we now have enough resources to feed and house everyone on
the earth; they are just unevenly distributed. A distribution of resources both
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 113
within (from rich to poor in the US) and between (from the US to sub-Saharan
Africa for instance) countries would allow all to be adequately catered for.
Therefore:
what is denounced as ‘utopian’ is no longer that which has ‘no place’ and
cannot have any place in the historical universe, but rather that which
is blocked from coming about by the power of the established societies.
(Marcuse 1969a:3–4)
As we have seen, Marcuse thought the working class had become co-opted
into capitalism. Therefore, the question became who would lead us beyond our
current social system? To use a phrase introduced in Chapter 2, who were the
universal class who, acting in their own self-interest, also acted in the interest
of humanity as a whole? Here Marcuse found his answer in the groups which
made up the ‘Great Refusal’.
The Great Refusal was a collection of groups who emerged in the 1960s and
were defined by their:
refusal to take part in the blessings of the ‘affluent society’ … the need for
better television sets, better automobiles, or comfort of any sort has been
cast off. What we see is rather the negation of this need. ‘We don’t want
to have anything to do with all this crap’. (Marcuse 1967:75)
114 sociaL tHeory for aLternative societies
As this indicates, the Great Refusal was a movement dedicated to rejecting the
basic premise of consumer capitalism by refusing to engage in consumerism.
This was a movement of the 1960s, as indicated by the groups Marcuse saw as
part of the Great Refusal: hippies; black activists; feminists; movements emerg-
ing from, and in support of, the Third World and student activists (Marcuse
1969a). All of these were united by their desire to ‘resist and deny the massive
exploitative power of corporate capitalism’ (Marcuse 1969a:vii). This could be
seen in the hippy desire to ‘drop out’; the black activist goal of highlighting the
contribution of slavery, and black oppression, to capital accumulation; feminist
movements highlighting that ‘the personal is political’ with the private realm
supporting capital accumulation (Marcuse 1974); protests against Third World
exploitation and, finally, how education helps produce the happy conscious-
ness (Marcuse 1969a). Therefore, the Great Refusal was a process of negation
in rejecting consumer capitalism and consequently, for Marcuse, outlines ‘the
limits of the established societies’ (Marcuse 1969a:viii). It also provides both
the impetus and space for thinking about an alternative which, for Marcuse,
will inevitably be a socialist alternative, different from its Soviet form (Marcuse
1969b:123).
However, in appealing to the Great Refusal, Marcuse quickly identifies a
problem, namely that there is a split between the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’
elements needed for it to be truly revolutionary. The objective element of
any revolutionary movement is ‘the human base of the process of produc-
tion which reproduces the established society’ (Marcuse 1969a:56), the group
whose non-participation in the current system would bring it crashing down.
As we have seen, this is still the working class for Marcuse. However, as we
also saw, Marcuse thought there was little potential of the working class, as
currently constituted, overthrowing capitalism. At the very least for Marcuse,
the working class would need to not stand in the way of any revolutionary
movement seeking to transcend capitalism. Unfortunately, he suggests they
are more likely to defend capitalism (Marcuse 1969a:65). The reason for this
is that the subjective element of the movement, the ‘political consciousness’
which seeks out an alternative, exists not within the working class but rather
among the ‘nonconformist young intelligentsia’ of the Great Refusal (Marcuse
1969a:56). Therefore, the political will needed to create an alternative is not
shared by the group who will be needed to make that alternative. This leaves
Marcuse with a problem since:
The answer for him returns us to the thought process of individuals and the
need for a ‘new sensibility’.
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 115
As we saw, Marcuse argued that consumer capitalism had changed the way in
which people think and what they see as their fundamental needs. The same
could be done to produce what Marcuse terms a ‘biological foundation for
socialism’, whereby our thoughts and needs direct us towards an alternative
via the creation of the new sensibility. The subjective elements of the Great
Refusal take the lead here by demonstrating the possibility of living ‘outside’
consumer capitalism (Marcuse 1964:260). Here Marcuse argues that Marxist
intellectuals, such as himself, should ‘remain loyal’ to those who take part in
the Great Refusal (Marcuse 1964:261) and that ‘the development of a true
consciousness is still the professional function of the universities’ (Marcuse
1969a:61). Therefore, both groups should devote their energies to producing
the new sensibility. This then leaves us with a further question, what is the
new sensibility?
Marcuse argues this new sensibility, as a way of seeing the world, would be
based upon aesthetics and an appeal to beauty. At this point Marcuse could be
accused of being a little vague and in reading what he wanted to see into forms
of artistic expression (Bronner 1988). However, his fundamental point is that
both capitalism and Soviet Marxism have measured progress in a purely ‘quan-
titative’ manner, the growth of the economy, without considering the ‘qualita-
tive’ elements of human activity, such as play, creativity and appreciation of
beauty (Marcuse 1969a:18). It was these elements which the Great Refusal
appealed to with claims such as ‘black is beautiful’ or ‘flower power’ (Mar-
cuse 1969a:41). These relate to what Marcuse terms the ‘aesthetic dimension’
of humanity, our appreciation for beauty and art. Appealing to this creates a
‘redefinition of needs’ away from the false needs of capitalism and towards our
own true needs (Marcuse 1964:250). The aesthetic dimension is where free
expression of human desires, freed from their commodified form in products,
emerges (Marcuse 1956:191).
To be more specific, let’s turn to an example from Marcuse (1964:231).
Imagine you’re walking through a major city. Like any city, it is loud and busy
with many buildings which are grey and concrete; you would struggle to call
it beautiful. Then, after turning a corner you find yourself in a park; it is quiet
and peaceful, with beautiful fields, trees, plants and impressive statues. As you
sit there and take it all in you might think to yourself ‘it is really great that the
city council maintains places like this within this busy city’. That, for Mar-
cuse, is indicative of the sensibility found under capitalism. The assumption is
that cities should be built to aid economic progress and growth; nature is an
obstacle to overcome. The new sensibility would instead lead you to think, ‘it is
awful that amidst all this brick and metal of the city this park is the only bit of
beautiful space left’. This is a thought process based upon the aesthetic dimen-
sion and one which sees our needs shift from the stimulation of consumerism
to the appreciation of beauty. This beauty can then also be appreciated more
116 sociaL tHeory for aLternative societies
the aesthetic dimension can serve as a sort of gauge for a free society …
the radical content of the aesthetic needs become evident as the demand
for their most elementary satisfaction is translated into group action on
an enlarged scale. From the harmless drive for better zoning regulations
and a modicum of protection from noise and dirt to the pressure for clos-
ing of whole city areas to automobiles, prohibition of transistor radios in
all public places, decommercialisation of nature, total urban reconstruc-
tion, control of the birth rate – such action would become increasingly
subversive to the institutions of capitalism and of their morality. (Mar-
cuse 1969a:27–8)
Therefore, further developing the new sensibility, based upon the aesthetic
dimension, within both the subjective and objective elements of the Great
Refusal, would inevitably for Marcuse lead to the replacement of capitalism
with an alternative which was concerned with the qualitative elements of
humanity. True freedom emerges when our ‘sensuous energy’ matches the ‘aes-
thetic state’ in which we live (Marcuse 1956:191).
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 117
along with the efforts of the radical intelligentsia, would produce a ‘new sen-
sibility’ among individuals which could unite the objective (the working class)
and subjective (the Great Refusal) groups needed to usher in a new socialist
society.
From the above, it would seem there are some initial elements of Marcuse’s
alternative which we can highlight. For example, his socialist alternative would
be one where, not dissimilar to that of Marx and Engels, the fruits of produc-
tion were distributed according to need and where ‘work becomes play’ (Mar-
cuse 1967:69). In addition, any future developments of society would be driven
by the aesthetic dimension:
Therefore, our very motivations, both individually and socially, would move
away from progress and profit towards play and beauty. We can still have cities
and all the urban institutions they include, but this is secondary to the concern
for beauty.
Nevertheless, this leaves unanswered practical questions of how such a soci-
ety would be organised. Careful readers will not be surprised to hear that, as a
Marxist, Marcuse is reluctant to provide such a blueprint. But he is unique in
his justification for not doing so, as the following indicates:
We are still confronted with the demand to state the ‘concrete alterna-
tive’. The demand is meaningless if it asks for a blueprint of the specific
institutions and relationships which would be those of the new society:
they cannot be determined a priori; they will develop, in trial and error,
as the new society develops. If we could form a concrete concept of the
alternative today, it would not be that of an alternative; the possibilities
of the new society are sufficiently ‘abstract’, i.e., removed from and incon-
gruous with the established universe to defy any attempt to identify them
in terms of this universe. (Marcuse 1969a:86)
So Marcuse cannot state the details of his alternative since, if he could, it would
not be an alternative. Our thought processes are so one dimensional that the
second dimension of critique is not fully attainable. Here again we see the cen-
tral importance of the dominance of positive thought for Marcuse; any attempt
to conceive of alternatives under the ideological dominance of consumer capi-
talism is bound to be limited by consumer capitalism. It is only by changing
the thought processes of individuals, allowing for negative thought, that a true
‘alternative’ can be conceived.
Therefore, Marcuse’s alternative is the new sensibility. Since we have the tech-
nological mechanisms available for utopia and as the Great Refusal is laying
118 sociaL tHeory for aLternative societies
the groundwork for the aesthetic dimension we know the broad parameters of
what an alternative would be like; it is the goal of the new sensibility to bring
it into being. Indeed, as Marcuse puts it, ‘society would be rational and free to
the extent to which it is organized, sustained and reproduced by an essentially
new historical Subject’ (Marcuse 1964:256).
Consequently, to answer our third question of whether Marcuse’s alternative
would solve the problems he identifies, Marcuse’s answer would be that it inev-
itably would. Any society created by those holding the new subjectivity would,
ipso facto, solve the problems of consumer capitalism. In this sense, as I argued
earlier, Marcuse’s goal was always to find the new subject who would create an
alternative; as Bernstein (1988:21) put it Marcuse ‘searched – in what some-
times seems like a desperate manner – for the signs of those social movements
and tendencies that were progressive and liberating’. Therefore, like Lefebvre,
Marcuse’s alternative is more about how we create a different world rather
than being the alternative itself. Where they differ is that Lefebvre looks to a
mode of organisation (autogestion) whereas Marcuse looks to a group and its
subjectivity. To conclude this chapter, I will turn to the further differences and
similarities between Marcuse and Lefebvre.
As we have seen, Lefebvre and Marcuse share some similarities. Both start
their critique with the increased dominance of consumer capitalism in the
1960s and turn to the new movements which emerge from this. Their con-
cerns with consumerism, social/false needs, diversity, global inequality and
the possibility of reduced work hours continue to be concerns of the current
day. However, in this final section, I would like to discuss how the similari-
ties and differences between their alternatives relate to the trends we’ve seen
throughout the book.
Perhaps most significant here is that both, being Marxists, are somewhat
reluctant to compose those recipes for the cook-shops of the future which
Marx discussed. However, as we have also seen, both do engage in some sug-
gestion of what the alternative will look like; if they do not compose recipes,
they certainly talk about the ingredients. Whether this be the autogestion which
will make the state disappear or the new sensibility and distribution of work
which will mean we value beauty and redesign our cities, there are clear ideas
here. This also indicates another similarity that each bases their hopes for the
alternative on an idea of ‘needs’, with our social/false needs being replaced with
human/true ones.
This opens up a problem. It could be argued that to talk of people’s ‘true’
needs and to criticise the ‘false’ needs which occupy them is to adopt the ulti-
mate legislative role – to provide universal statements concerning what people
‘really’ need but don’t realise it. This means that somehow the sociologist is
able to see through the fog of this repression, despite the fact that they live in
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Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse: neo-Marxist aLternatives 119
the same society as everyone else. Indeed, this has been a frequent criticism
made of Marcuse, given his call for the redefinition of needs. As MacIntyre
puts it, ‘The human nature of those who inhabit advanced industrial societies
has been moulded so that their very wants, needs and aspirations have become
conformist – except for a minority which includes Marcuse’ (MacIntyre
1970:88). This is especially problematic given that:
Marcuse did, of course, disassociate himself from Soviet Marxism and strongly
rejected any role akin to a leader (Marcuse 1969b). And, as we saw, Lefebvre
was kicked out of the PCF for opposing Stalinism but retained his Leninism.
Nevertheless, it does show one of the key issues surrounding their alternatives –
what are our needs?
In defence of both, they see this question as primarily not being answered
by them but by revolutionary agents; as good Marxists, they see the alternative
created by someone else. It is here we come to their key difference, one which
Lefebvre tackled head-on:
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7
Selma James, Andrea
Dworkin and Their
Interlocutors: Feminist
Alternatives
It could be argued that the alternatives discussed thus far in this book have had
a flaw: they have marginalised women.
There are two ways in which this claim would seem to have some merit.
Firstly, to this point, we have largely seen a ‘Great Man’ history of social theory.
Each chapter has been devoted either to one or two men. Not only is the gender
of these writers problematic but, more broadly, it could be argued that to treat
these men as somehow unique or ‘special’ overlooks the contribution of many,
including women, to their ideas and ability to express them. We may thank
history for the fact that Marx devoted all his time to careful study of govern-
ment reports in the British Library in order to write Das Kapital; however
this life was only possible due to the efforts, and sacrifices in terms of lifestyle
and health, of his long-suffering wife Jenny and his daughters (Wheen 1999).
Furthermore, such a history marginalises prominent female sociologists of the
time who are forgotten, while their male counterparts are venerated. For exam-
ple, the contributions of Eleanor Marx to socialist theory and organisation are
often ignored (Holmes 2014). This was the fate of many other early female
theorists (McDonald 1997).
Secondly, and related to the above, the question of gender has largely been
absent in previous chapters. There have been some exceptions to this; in the last
chapter we saw how Lefebvre condemned the way in which the repetitive and
alienating elements of everyday life fell disproportionally on women (a claim
criticised as overlooking the creativity women practise at the everyday; see Fel-
ski 1999/2000). We also saw how Marcuse took inspiration from the femi-
nist movement in his conception of the Great Refusal since this was ‘perhaps
the most important and potentially the most radical political movement that
we have’ (Marcuse 1974:165). Also, Mead was a frequent contributor to, and
advocate for, female suffrage campaigns in the US, partly due to his friendship
and collaboration with Jane Addams (Shalin 1988, Deegan 2007). However,
beyond these isolated examples, women, and the question of gender equality,
have largely been marginalised.
Part of the reason for this could be linked to the topics discussed to this point.
If we were to survey the common factors such sociological alternatives hoped
to change we would see factors such as paid work/labour (Marx and Engels,
Durkheim, Marcuse), the economy (Marx and Engels, Du Bois, Lefebvre), poli-
tics (Durkheim, Mead, Mannheim, Marcuse), debate (Mead, Durkheim), the
use of public space (Lefebvre, Marcuse) and education (Durkheim, Du Bois,
121
122 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
Mead, Mannheim). What marks these out is that they are public occurrences.
All of our sociologists thus far, representing the dominant trend in nineteenth-
and twentieth-century liberal thought and politics, saw public activity as that
which needs reforming; what happened in the private realm was, both figura-
tively and literally, behind closed doors. It was not the role of any group, be
it the state, a revolutionary class or particularly enlightened intellectuals, to
intervene there. However, as we shall see in this chapter, it is often in this pri-
vate realm – including the confinement to it – that women experience the most
profound forms of inequality, exploitation and oppression.
Therefore, it could be argued, this book thus far has employed a particular
standpoint theory, namely the standpoint of men. It may be suggested that in
doing so the alternatives discussed to this point ignore a key problem with con-
temporary society: patriarchy.
Patriarchy can be defined as ‘a system of social structures and practices in
which men dominate, oppress and exploit women’ (Walby 1990:20). For a
society to be patriarchal it does not mean that each individual man sets out to
dominate and exploit women, though many will and do, rather that the society
is constructed in such a way so that the dominance of men and the masculine,
whether this be in politics, business, the home or sexual relations, will repro-
duce itself.
Therefore, this chapter will be slightly different from those that have come
before. While there are two key theorists here – Selma James (1930–) and
Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) – the following will discuss their alternatives
as part of the wider feminist movement and body of thought. This is in order
to recognise a key feminist claim that ideas are not products of Great Men or
Great Women but rather emerge from within a particular social and political
milieu. While some have suggested that contemporary feminism has lost inter-
est in outlining alternatives (see Bergman et al. 2014) since this school has only
Marxism as a competitor for its claim for most ‘political’ body of thought there
are numerous feminist alternatives, though most have come from outside social
theory (see Sargisson 1996 for an overview). Furthermore, feminist alterna-
tives, reflecting the diversity of the field, tend to find their most perceptive crit-
ics in other feminists. In doing so such alternatives have – despite disagreement
on the value of the term and resulting use of others such as ‘gender regime’
(Walby 2011:104) – attempted to confront patriarchy. I will begin by tracing
some broad themes in feminism before turning to the specific alternatives of
James and Dworkin for further discussion.
Feminist alternatives
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feminiST alTernaTiveS 123
for women’ in which ‘she must learn to compete then, not as a women, but as a
human being’ (Friedan 1963:328). This included greater female representation
in public fields including education, law, business, politics and the media which
would allow women to ‘make life plans geared to their real abilities’ (Friedan
1963:329). Such a view was instrumental to the passing of laws which made
discrimination on the basis of gender illegal, such as the 1970 Equal Pay Act
in the UK.
A further alternative offered in this field is the use of quotas, whereby a certain
number of women within an organisation is set as a minimum. For example, a
law drafted by the EU parliament would require 40 per cent of non-executive
directors of stock-exchange-listed companies to be women (European Parlia-
ment 2013). Furthermore, the use of quotas in politics has become an increas-
ing trend, where regulations are set down requiring the number of female MPs
or where political parties use an all-women shortlist of candidates for vacant
seats (Squires 2007). The UK Labour Party has been a notable supporter of this
policy as a way of ensuring that 50 per cent of its candidates in winnable seats
are women (Labour Women’s Network 2014).
A different strategy, found more prominently within Marxist feminism, is
the goal of conscious raising in order to create more feminists and ultimately a
revolution. For example, Sheila Rowbotham argues:
This has been a very quick tour of some feminist alternatives. To explore this
further I will now turn to two specific ideas offered by James and Dworkin
respectively: wages for housework and banning pornography.
There are three reasons why I have chosen these two alternatives as my focus.
Firstly, they are distinctly feminist. Looking through the above alternatives they
are ones which could, conceivably, have been held by some of the sociologists
we have discussed to this point. For example, Marx and Engels would certainly
support Rowbotham’s declaration of a socialist organisation and revolution;
Lefebvre would have had few qualms signing up to Brown’s views of the state
and it seems that Mead would have supported Friedan’s ideas on the public
role of women. These two alternatives however are uniquely feminist. Secondly,
reflecting my argument at the start of the chapter, in their feminist standpoint,
they aim directly at the private realm and embody the key feminist claim of the
personal being political. Thirdly, these are alternatives which, in the best tradi-
tion of feminism, have united sociologists with activists from outside academia,
often blurring the line between the two. Therefore I will discuss each of these,
including the critiques offered by other feminists, in turn.
The push to make housework paid labour was a prominent cause within
Marxist feminism. Therefore, it relied upon a distinctively Marxist critique
of society, related to the workings of capitalism (Acker 2004). Capitalism as
an economic system exacerbates and reinforces a strict divide between two
realms: the public and the private. Prior to the emergence of capitalism most
work was done in, or at least around, the home. Therefore, there was little
to no divide between our private lives and our professional work. Capitalism
however exacerbated such a division. Increasingly people went ‘out’ to work,
partly because of the emergence of factories where work would be conducted.
Therefore, the public realm, the world of work, becomes increasingly associ-
ated with productive activity.
However, this leaves behind a private realm, the world of the home. Since
productive work has moved outside, this leaves the home with reproductive
work. Reproductive here means not just the reproduction of the species –
children are made, born and raised in the home – but more everyday forms of
reproduction of people as workers. This includes cooking, cleaning, washing,
providing relaxation and sleep. Since both productive and reproductive work
are full-time jobs it requires two people to achieve them. It is from this that
the split between housework as women’s work and paid work as men’s work
emerges for Marxist feminists. This position was outlined in embryonic form
by Engels (1978).
There are many critiques offered here, but a key one is that the public
realm relies upon the private. For capitalism to generate profit, its workers
must be well-fed and rested in order to return to work the next day. Also the
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feminiST alTernaTiveS 125
One often reads the standard, throwaway line, in feminist and non-
feminist work alike: ‘Women do the double shift’ or ‘Women retain
responsibility for the home’. The very fact that it appears as a mere line of
text in an article or manifesto or even a book mimics the lack of impor-
tance attached to it in the world; yet it remains one of the most important
statements made about women today. (Benn 1998:239)
It was this which led some feminist scholars to claim that the significance and
extent of housework should be recognised. There are two positions here. The
first is that housework should be socialised and performed collectively. The
second, from James, is that it should become paid labour.
The first of these positions is represented by Margaret Benston (1980). For
Benston, housework, and thereby women, occupy a unique position in a capi-
talist economy. One success of capitalism was its ability to give everything a
126 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
market value, to make all relations subject to ‘callous “cash payment”’ (Marx
and Engels 1992:5). However, housework has remained outside this, being sub-
ject to no capitalist calculation. In this sense, for Benston, it is pre-capitalist,
meaning each household constitutes a ‘pre-industrial entity, in the same way that
peasant farmers or cottage weavers constituted pre-industrial units’ (Benston
1980:123). Nevertheless, as we have seen, this pre-capitalist labour remains
central to capitalist profit. As a Marxist, Benston ultimately believes in the
socialisation of the means of production and argues that, as part of such a pro-
cess, this historical anomaly should be corrected by ensuring that housework is
also socialised. Rather than individuals, most likely women, being responsible
for housework, it should be done collectively. As she puts it:
This means that women as a group are freed from the responsibility of doing
housework, with its social value recognised. While it is likely some of these
women move from a private to a communal kitchen, for Benston such work is
less alienating and more social than its previous private form. Therefore, the
link to dehumanising housework is broken.
A slightly different, and more prominent, idea is offered by James with
her colleague Mariarosa Dalla Costa. Together they published a book enti-
tled The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (Dalla Costa
and James 1971) and in the same year James founded the International Wages
for Housework campaign. They were critical of ideas, already circulating at
that point, about socialising housework since this ‘would regiment none other
than women in some alluring work so that we will then have the possibility
at lunchtime of eating shit collectively in the canteen’ (Dalla Costa and James
1972: 40). This was partly due to their having a different idea of the relation of
housework to capitalism from that held by Benston. Rather than seeing house-
work as having been left behind by capitalism, they argue women performing
housework are capitalism’s ‘indispensable workforce, at home, cleaning, wash-
ing and ironing; making, disciplining and bringing up babies; servicing men
physically, sexually and emotionally’ (Dalla Costa and James 1972:3). Because
women’s housework is central to the surplus labour produced by capitalism,
they are part of the proletariat, but their proletarian nature is ‘hidden by the
lack of a wage’ (James 1975:27). Therefore, for James, women houseworkers
are exploited like the working class but, unlike them, they are not given a wage
and thereby are seen as outside the proletariat and the struggle against capital-
ism; they cannot be working class, they do not ‘work’.
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feminiST alTernaTiveS 127
Therefore, for Dalla Costa and James, women do have a unique position
within the relations of production; they produce surplus labour in the home
without any monetary return. But the fact that they do produce surplus labour
means they are part of the proletariat. Consequently, some of this profit should
be returned to women in the form of a wage for housework, paid by the state
from taxes on capital. This is the policy of wages for housework.
Dalla Costa and James argue this policy should be implemented immedi-
ately. Given that capital is being produced now and can be taxed, there are no
practical issues delaying it (Dalla Costa and James 1972). If it is not brought in
immediately, they encourage the enactment of a ‘general strike’ (Dalla Costa
1974) whereby women refuse to do housework and men refuse to do paid
work. This would, for them, demonstrate the connection of women and men
as workers producing profit for capitalism. Furthermore, elements of this strike
can already be found; for example, the use of birth control by women is an
indication of how the demands of housewifery are being denied (James 1975).
Having seen the policy of wages for housework, we are left with the question
of whether this would solve the critique offered by James and, importantly,
whether it would lessen patriarchy. There are two justifications offered for this
policy. The first is that, by giving women a wage for their labour and thus
putting them in the same position as their male counterparts, it expands the
number and strength of the proletariat class, with a rallying cry of ‘power to
the sisters and therefore to the class’ (Dalla Costa and James 1972:17). It is this
element of wages for housework as part of a wider campaign against capitalism
which was especially important for James, as indicated in her role establishing
the International Wages for Housework group. This campaign was:
Therefore, while wages for housework is an essential first step, this argu-
ment places the overall responsibility with a post-capitalist order, socialism,
to remove patriarchy. This demonstrates the fundamentally Marxist nature of
an argument which sees its potential success in uniting housewives and the
proletariat.
The second factor would have a more immediate impact. By waging house-
work, it becomes a job and opens up the possibility of refusing that job.
Without this it is simply assumed to be something women do naturally. Mak-
ing housework a job with pay removes this natural link and sees it as a task
which anyone, man or woman, can do (James 1975). The claim here is that if
128 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
housework became waged, some women may well continue to do what they
did before, only this time receiving a wage, while others would refuse to do it.
This means others, including men, would take up the role since now it would
have a monetary reward attached to it. In this sense, Fedrici (1980) is right that
James’ campaign was intended as one of wages against housework, as:
It is the demand by which our nature ends and our struggle begins
because just to want wages for housework means to refuse that work as
the expression of our nature, and therefore to refuse precisely the female
role that capital has invented for us. (Fedrici 1980:257)
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providing another job which it seems, especially in the interim, would be done
mainly by women could further reinforce such a link (Tong 1998:110). In
addition to this, if the state were simply taxing the husband to pay the wife,
this would not change inequality between families. If, instead, the state paid it
out of general revenue, it would seemingly need to tax everyone, including sin-
gle parents, creating greater forms of inequality (Bergmann 1986). Therefore,
others argue removing the central role given to the family under capitalism is
the key point of critique rather than seeking to institutionalise a housewife role
(Landes 1980).
A third criticism is that a wage would do nothing to change the nature of
housework. In an echo of Lefebvre’s argument in the previous chapter, it would
continue to remain isolated, monotonous and alienating labour. The only
exception would be that now you were being paid for it, you could not com-
plain (Oakley 1974:230–3). Finally, it is suggested that rather than overthrow
or question capitalism, as James and Dalla Costa hope, a wage for housework
would actually legitimate it. Capitalism would have succeeded in sucking more
activity into ‘callous cash payment’ and any idea of such work as loving or
caring would be removed (Tong 1998:110). In addition, it would seemingly
enhance capitalism’s claim to being an equal and fair system which is why,
Oakley notes, the policy had some support on the anti-feminist right (Oakley
1974:226). While this may not be seen as a criticism of the policy in general –
making capitalism more equal may be valued – it is a criticism against James
who advocates this policy precisely because she thinks it will help bring about
the demise of capitalism.
As we have seen, the wages for housework alternative has attracted many
detractors within feminism. However, this is not to say that the policy does not
remain a live issue. James continues to advocate it, including in publications
(James 2012) and in public interventions. For example, in the 2012 US presi-
dential campaign she publically defended Ann Romney, mother of five and wife
of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, against claims she had ‘never worked’.
Furthermore, those who may not agree with the substance of James’ idea have
nevertheless supported the principle of paying a wage for work currently not
paid. For example, Melissa Benn advocates a ‘carer’s income’ which:
Also, as we shall see in Chapter 9, those advocating a basic income have often
done so partly on the basis that it would help lessen the unequal division of
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domestic labour. An income paid to everyone would help recognise the differ-
ent life circumstances for women while also achieving equality (Lister 1999).
Therefore, the principles behind wages for housework continue to live on in
social theory, both within and outwith feminism, despite the criticisms offered
against it. However, as we shall also see in Chapter 9, others argue this over-
looks the continuing power of patriarchy to shape distinct forms of masculinity
and feminity.
It is now time to turn to our second feminist alternative: banning pornography.
Banning pornography
Pornography became a key feminist issue in the 1970s/1980s with the emer-
gence of the ‘sex wars’ (Bryson 1999). Few topics have managed to divide
different branches of feminism as much as this one with, as we shall see, sup-
posedly ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ positions taken not just on pornography but sex more
generally (Tong 1998:65).
In what follows I will outline three broad positions taken within feminism
regarding pornography. The first, radical feminist, position is held by Dwor-
kin in collaboration with Catherine McKinnon and argues that pornography
should be banned. As we shall see, Dworkin and McKinnon had some notable
successes in pushing for laws against pornography. I will also highlight some
recent commentators who share Dworkin’s position in response to changes in
the availability of pornography and its entrance into mass culture. The second,
more liberal, position argues that banning it would be an authoritarian act, a
limiting of free speech. Furthermore, such a potential ban overlooks the posi-
tives of pornography for female sexuality. The third position, held often, though
not solely, by Marxist/socialist feminists, occupies the ground between these
two. Such scholars argue that pornography is perhaps negative for women, but
it does not cause patriarchy and is instead a symptom of it. Therefore, banning
pornography is ultimately short-sighted and unlikely to create any change in
the position of women. The reasons such positions are held reflect the differing
political positions of feminists.
Before turning to such a discussion, the reader should be aware that, in what
follows, there is discussion of the link between pornography and violence, par-
ticularly sexual violence. This includes some mention of such acts.
We will begin with the radical feminist position of Dworkin and MacKinnon, a
position put most clearly by Dworkin in her classic Pornography: Men Possess-
ing Women (1989). Dworkin’s argument sets out from a fundamental prem-
ise that ‘pornography happens’ (Dworkin 1989:xxxviii). Rather than defining
pornography as a collection of videos and images Dworkin wants to see it as
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does not mean ‘writing about sex’ or ‘depictions of the erotic’ or ‘depic-
tions of sexual acts’ or ‘depictions of nude bodies’ or ‘sexual representa-
tions’ or any other such euphemism. It means the graphic depiction of
women as vile whores. (Dworkin 1989:200)
Another example came from Linda Boreman who had achieved a certain level
of fame as the star of Deep Throat, a popular American pornographic movie
released in 1972. Boreman spoke of how she came to work on the movie
due to coercion by her then husband, a pornography producer, saying ‘every
time someone watches that film, they are watching me being raped’ (Dworkin
1989:xvi).
The second way pornography happens to women is via men who have con-
sumed pornography seeking to ‘act it out’ on their sexual partners. The acts,
positions and forms of contact shown in pornography, which, as we have seen,
Dworkin sees as the dominance of men over women, become a guide to how
sex should be conducted. As she puts it ‘he comes to the pornography a believer,
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fact that ‘the man makes hate to the woman, as each sex act is designed to
deliver the maximum amount of degradation’ (Dines 2010:xxiv–v). The sec-
ond element concerns not just the increased presence of nudity and sexual
gestures in popular culture but also the elements of pornography Dworkin
emphasised: male dominance and female sexual availability. This can be seen
in various areas of culture: music videos; so-called lad’s mags which, bor-
dering the line of ‘pornography’, show women as sexually available objects;
advertisements which rely upon sex to sell products; and, in the UK, page 3
models in tabloid newspapers. Writers have also highlighted the extent to
which children, either wittingly or unwittingly, are exposed to pornography
via the Internet (Walter 2010:106).
The sheer prominence of such material means that pornography has ‘hijacked
our sexuality’ (Dines 2010) by increasingly subjecting all sexual interaction to
its rules and commands. For such writers a particularly troubling element in
this has been the role of women in ‘raunch culture’, reproducing the tropes
of pornography by various means, for example, taking striptease classes and
embodying the sexual practices of pornography (Levy 2006). These feed into
a wider culture of ‘porn chic’ where women objectify themselves in line with
the demands of the male gaze and the expectation of the dominant ‘bad boy’
(Lynch 2012). This can include women grooming themselves in line with male
expectations and the increased use of cosmetic surgery in order to make a
woman’s labia fit a preconceived ‘norm’ as prescribed by pornography (Walter
2010:108–9). This has been made possible for Dines (2010) by pornography
‘sanitising itself’ and seeming more appealing to the outside world via either
making mainstream stars out of pornographers (such as Jenna Jameson) or by
presenting itself as playful and fun (as in the Girls Gone Wild series). The ubiq-
uity of the Playboy bunny as simply another brand is one of the best examples
of this (Levy 2006).
A wider critique offered by these scholars is of the nature of pornography as
something produced by an industry. It is made not for sexual liberation but for
profit; the increased availability of pornography therefore forces producers to
find more unique, extreme, forms to carve out a niche in the market. For Boyle
(2010b), sex in pornography is ‘commercial sex’ performed for money, with
most of the profit from this sex not going to the performer but to the producer.
Given the fact that most producers favour young performers, this ensures that
those women who perform pornography have a relatively short shelf life, in
which they encounter a high risk of STDs and personal injuries in order to
ensure profit for (most likely) a male producer. This, for Boyle (2010a), means
that one is not ‘anti-sex’ but anti-‘commercial sex’.
The result of all this, for contemporary anti-pornography feminists, is that
male dominance is continually reproduced and sexual violence continues to
be a central part of female life. However, this is often done via new means
where the portrayal of ‘porn chic’ is seen to be an active choice on the part
of ‘empowered’ women. Therefore, a world without pornography would be
much improved.
134 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
Dworkin and MacKinnon defended their law precisely because it did not limit
its definition to ‘classic’ pornography but rather attacked the element outlined
in their critique: male dominance and female sexual submission and availabil-
ity. This could, and as we saw above does, happen outside the boundaries of
traditional pornography.
So why would such a law be effective in fighting patriarchy? The answer for
Dworkin is not only via the simple transfer of wealth from pornographer to
claimant; instead the law has a wider impact, as she puts it:
(1) [the law] tells the truth about what pornography is and does; (2) it
tells the truth about how women are exploited and hurt by the use of
pornography; (3) it seeks to expand the speech of women by taking the
pornographers’ gags out of our mouths; (4) it seeks to expand the speech
and enhance the civil status of women by giving us the courts as a forum
in which we will have standing and authority; (5) it is a mechanism for
redistributing power, taking it from pimps, giving it to those they have
been exploiting for profit, including for pleasure; (6) it says that women
matter, including the women in pornography. (Dworkin 1989:xxxiv)
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Therefore, while not directly specifying it in law, the overall goal is a world
without pornography in which, as a result, women are greatly empowered.
The law had a choppy time in the US. Two Minnesota state councils passed
the law before it was vetoed both times by their mayor – who, Dworkin notes
sarcastically, was active in Amnesty International, ‘opposing torture outside
Minnesota’ (Dworkin 1989:xxx). It was then passed in the city of Indian-
apolis in 1984 (though only in reference to violent pornography) before
being ruled unconstitutional on the grounds of free speech. MacKinnon and
Dworkin then sued two city councils to put it to popular vote: Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in 1985 and Bellingham, Washington, in 1988. In Cambridge
it received only 42 per cent of the vote but passed in Bellingham with
62 per cent of the vote before, again, being found unconstitutional
(MacKinnon 1991). Despite such setbacks the law attracted a large amount
of international attention and, as we shall see further below, one country did
in fact pass a version of the law.
Would the MacDworkin law be successful in solving the problem identi-
fied by their critique? Below we will turn to feminist critiques which argue
it would not; however at the moment we can suggest it may be successful on
three grounds. Firstly, as we saw, pornography is an industry where many
of those taking part do so due to a history of sexual abuse and coercion. By
allowing women to claim compensation and, perhaps ultimately, remove por-
nography, it not only ensures the men who commit such abuse are punished
but, more importantly, lessens the incentive to make pornography and there-
fore abuse and coerce women in the first place. Reflecting the position of Boyle
(2010b), this would also mean fewer men profiting from the exploitation of
female sexuality. The second way in which it may be successful is, with the
lessening availability of pornography, men will be less exposed to its message
and, therefore, less likely to practise it out on women. This would not only
reduce the amount of unequal sex but, more importantly, lessen the amount
of sexual violence carried out by men on women. It is for this reason that
while some of the contemporary ‘anti-pornography’ scholars may not declare
a belief in the value of the MacDworkin law they nevertheless support its end
goal due to pornography’s connection, however filtered, to sexual violence.
Boyle, for instance, sees the work of Dworkin and MacKinnon as a ‘starting
point for political organization’; their law is not necessarily an answer to the
problem but inspires feminists to fight pornography (Boyle 2010b:4). This is
why, although eschewing the ‘top down’ regulation of the MacDworkin law,
Dines had a hand in forming the Stop Porn Culture group who, through activ-
ism and ‘grassroots education’ (Stop Porn Culture 2014), hopes to lessen the
reach and use of pornography since ‘in a just society, there is no room for porn’
(Dines 2010:165).
The third point is a wider one. Given the role of pornography in male
dominance – recalling Dworkin, its position as the DNA of such dominance –
banning it removes a key forum through which patriarchy is expressed.
In particular, the space available to, as MacKinnon argued, ‘sexualise’ male
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between ‘sexual freedom and economic, social and political freedom’ (Stros-
sen 2000:25). A more ‘prosex’ feminism would not paint this as a choice and
instead seek to value and expand female sexual expression as a key component
of social freedom.
Strossen’s third point is linked to the second. Due to the antisex views of
MacKinnon and Dworkin they overlook that pornography can, and does, have
positive outcomes. This can be true for women seeking to discover their own
sexual tastes and desires, as well as for couples seeking ‘tips’ on their own sex
life. Furthermore, the availability of pornography means that those curious
about their own sexuality can use both gay and straight forms to understand
what they desire. Consequently, for Strossen, any attempt to ban pornography
will simply mean that a trade in black market pornography will emerge to
fill these needs and female sexuality will become an even more taboo subject
(Strossen 2000:161–78).
Finally, Strossen turns the tables on MacKinnon and Dworkin. As we have
seen above, one reason why the MacDworkin laws are advocated is in order
to provide women protection via the laws of the state and its courts. But both
MacKinnon and Dworkin believe such bodies to be patriarchal and therefore
shaped by, and act in line with, the precepts of male domination (MacKinnon
1982). So why trust the patriarchal states and courts to protect women (Stros-
sen 2000:217–18)? The result of this can be found for Strossen in the one case
where the MacDworkin laws were enacted.
In the 1992 case of R v. Butler – concerning the prosecution of a porno-
graphic shop owner – the Canadian Supreme Court implemented a form of the
MacDworkin law into the criminal code. In effect, this made it illegal to sell
pornography with the exception of some ‘softer’ forms. Strossen uses this as a
test case for the MacDworkin laws, pointing out that rather than attack the
forms of patriarchal pornography, the law was primarily used to seize, pros-
ecute and close down those selling gay, lesbian and feminist materials (Strossen
2000:230–6). She also draws on a case where Dworkin’s own Pornography
text was seized at the Canadian border due to its explicit nature (Strossen
2000:237). This example furthers Strossen’s point that if the state and law are
patriarchal, giving them more power is likely to lead to the enforcement of that
patriarchal order.
MacKinnon and Dworkin (1994) released a statement on this Canadian
case which said four things. Firstly, that R v. Butler did not implement the
MacDworkin law and the definition of pornography is different as are the
problems it is seen to engender. Secondly, while MacKinnon participated
in the case, Dworkin opposed the prosecution from the start. Thirdly, the
supposed seizure of Dworkin’s books was due to a routine customs check
unrelated to Butler. Finally, while the Canadian constitution supports sexual
equality and this makes the possibility of passing their civil law stronger than
in the US, neither of them support a criminal law passed for this measure
(MacKinnon and Dworkin 1994). This still seems problematic in line with
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Such critiques also highlight a bit of a contradiction at the heart of the anti-
pornography group. While radical feminists such as MacKinnon and Dworkin
are central, equally active, especially in the US, are members of the religious
right. This later group would seemingly not share feminism’s end goal of over-
throwing patriarchy. Therefore, campaigns to ban pornography, by giving
strength to such groups, can actually enhance patriarchy, as:
Therefore, while not necessarily sharing Strossen’s view of the inherently posi-
tive elements of pornography – though they do share a cynicism regarding
its link to sexual violence (Segal 1990) – this group of feminists ultimately
shares her conclusion. Banning pornography will simply be another way to
make female sexuality an unspoken topic and the realm of sex will remain one
of male desires. What is needed instead is more feminist pornography, more
expression of female sexual desire and figures in pornography (McGregor
1989, Segal 1993). Or, as Power (2009:58) puts it, ‘a re-establishment of the
link between sex and politics’.
Conclusion
As the above has shown, the debates on banning pornography have been varied
and vociferous. While Dworkin and MacKinnon have seen this as the key pol-
icy which can be used to overcome patriarchy, others have argued either that it
would be negative for women or that it misses the target and that in fact other
factors, whether this be capitalism, the state or culture more generally, are to
blame for patriarchy. The position one takes in this argument ultimately reflects
certain theoretical assumptions which can be made about patriarchy. If this is
seen as primarily expressed through sexual domination then banning pornog-
raphy is a positive step. If, however, the gender representations in pornography
are seen as a reflection, rather than the cause, of patriarchy, then banning it
would either be short-sighted or ineffective.
It is these kinds of questions concerning the cause of patriarchy which also
marked debates on wages for housework. As we saw, James and her colleagues
imagined housework as the central part to the perpetuation of patriarchy;
the restriction of women to the home and away from the wider class struggle
removed them as a key player in producing a more just order. James’ crit-
ics however argued the opposite, that housework and the domestic division
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of labour was just one form of patriarchy. Make this paid and not only will
women be expected to do it, but it will remove public opportunities for women
and do nothing to lessen their daily alienation.
Therefore these alternatives are marked by the key question of where one
should attack patriarchy. If housework was paid and pornography was banned,
would this be removed? If not, and it seems the criticisms outlined here bring
home that these policies alone may not do the job, we are left looking for fur-
ther alternatives.
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Anthony Giddens and
Ulrich Beck: Cosmopolitan
Alternatives 8
The alternatives considered thus far have, with some exceptions, largely been
ones produced in sociology’s past. We shall see in the next two chapters claims
that recently sociology has neglected sociological alternatives. However, this
chapter considers contemporary alternatives from two sociologists who share
a research agenda with ‘reflexive modernization’ (Beck et al. 1994): Anthony
Giddens (1938–) and Ulrich Beck (1944–2015).
Included in this joint research agenda is a focus on globalization. Many of
the alternatives we have discussed to this point have seen themselves as global
in scope: Marx and Engels’ proletariat had been stripped ‘of every trace of
national character’ (Marx and Engels 1992:14) and are united globally by their
status as workers. For Durkheim, nation states can only claim a basis for their
civic morals when they express a form of ‘world patriotism’ which reflects the
general interests of humanity (Inglis 2014a). Finally, Lefebvre imagined his
alternative of autogestion to incorporate an element of ‘worldness’ where, shar-
ing Marx and Engels’ view, the proletariat are united by their experiences and
desire for self-organisation across the globe (Lefebvre 1976b:162).
However, global elements are not entirely part of the societies these writ-
ers confront and critique; rather, globality often forms part of the normative
goal. For example, Lefebvre’s autogestion helps bring this worldness into being,
rather than occurring because of it. This differs from the work of Giddens
and Beck, where the very existence of globalization creates the conditions and
need for cosmopolitan alternatives. While, of the two, Beck is more explicit
in discussing his sociology as ‘cosmopolitan’ (Beck 2006a), Giddens sees his
alternative containing ideas which ‘express and derive from this global cosmo-
politanism’ (Giddens 1994a:253).
Given the focus on globalization and cosmopolitanism here there were
other options for consideration. For example, David Held (2000) has written
of the possibility for global forms of democratic regulation, Jurgen Habermas
(2000) of the possible ‘post-national’ public sphere developing in areas such
as Europe which provides space for a new political community and Leslie
Sklair (2009) has written from a Marxist perspective of the emancipatory
potential in ‘generic’ globalization against its current capitalist form. Further-
more, writers such as David Graeber (2002) and Valentine Moghadam (2005)
have written of the anarchist or feminist alternatives suggested by alter-
globalization movements. Instead Giddens and Beck have been chosen for
three reasons. Firstly, while in the discussion of Mannheim we have touched
141
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upon the significance of the link between sociologists and governments this
has not been fully developed. Here Giddens is a useful example given that he
not only developed such links to the governing party but became a parliamen-
tarian in the UK. As we shall see, this helped shape the form of his sociological
alternative. Secondly, Giddens and Beck are distinct from those mentioned
above as their alternatives emerge from a sociological analysis of what they
see as the emerging ‘individualization’ encouraged by globalization and its
impact on previously stable inequalities expressed by class. Finally, neither
limit their alternatives to simple global forms of regulation but seek to discuss
new forms of work and ecology befitting a globalized society. Sociological
attempts to create ‘ecological’ alternatives have been broad, including claims
for the embracing of international state regulation and green political action
(Martell 1994), a ‘digital panopticon’ which monitors and limits environmen-
tal damage (Urry 2008) or the embracing of a ‘green socialism’ (Benton 2002).
But, as even their critics note, the strength of Giddens and Beck is their attempt
to combine ecological issues and social theory, lacking in other ecological writ-
ers (Benton 2002:258). Therefore, these two are valuable to discuss for this
topic due to their fitting most exactly the three-stage model of sociological
alternatives and, in doing so, drawing upon distinct theoretical claims not yet
covered in this book.
Before turning to their work it is necessary to define two of the key words
used here: globalization and cosmopolitanism. These indicate slightly different
factors which relate to the critiques and alternatives offered by Giddens and
Beck. Globalization refers to a condition of the social which affects masses
across the globe which:
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Anthony Giddens
Giddens was born in 1938 in Edmonton, North East London, being the first
member of his family to attend university. His career began in 1961 when he
joined Leicester University. The sociology department at Leicester was, along
with LSE, one of the most significant in the development of sociology in Britain,
helping to train a whole generation of major sociologists (Eldridge 1990). Come
1969, Giddens left Leicester to join Cambridge, where he was central to estab-
lishing sociology at a university traditionally reluctant to accept it. Indeed, it
remained so, with Giddens’ application for promotion to reader being rejected
nine times. During this time period, Giddens’ work focused primarily on two
fields: the exploration and critique of the ‘classics’, most notably in his work
on Marx, Durkheim and Weber (Giddens 1971), and the development of his
own structuration theory, which attempted to combine structure and agency
(Giddens 1984). He stayed at Cambridge until 1996, at which point he left to
become the director of the LSE (see Bryant and Jary 2001 for a full biography).
Come 2004 he entered the House of Lords as a peer for the governing Labour
Party and took the title Baron Giddens of Southgate in the London Borough
of Enfield.
It is this later stage of Giddens’ career which will be considered in this chap-
ter. This began in the early 1990s, with his shift in focus towards globalization,
the nature of modernity, lifestyle and the changing nature of politics. Before
this, Giddens did have an implicit alternative (Dawson 2013:34–41), identify-
ing himself as a ‘libertarian socialist’ (Giddens 1981:175) and claiming that
Marx’s conception of praxis was ‘an indispensable contribution to social theory
today’ (Giddens 1981:2). Here Giddens defended the emancipatory potential of
a socialist project along broadly Marxist lines (Giddens et al. 1982:64–5, 72).
However, come the 1990s, he argued that ‘socialism is dead on both the level of
theory and that of practice’ (Giddens 1995:12) due to the fall of communism
and the changing circumstances of the time. The new alternative Giddens
developed was said to reflect these new conditions.
Giddens argues that we have entered a new stage of modernity, termed ‘high’
or ‘late’ modernity (Giddens 1990, 1991). This new stage is marked by three
significant factors. Firstly, it is a ‘post-traditional’ order, where traditional ways
144 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
of acting and thinking lose their appeal. This impacts all areas of social life for
Giddens: traditional forms of identity (for example class) begin to lose their
salience as depicters of lifestyle (Giddens 1991:82); traditional conceptions of
gender roles within intimate relationships begin to decline (Giddens 1992);
and, confronted with the emergence of climate change, we reconsider our rela-
tion to nature (Giddens 1994b:76–9). With the lessening ability of tradition to
guide our actions, a post-traditional order is one in which choice and decisions
are part of daily activity, where ‘we have no choice but to choose how to be
and how to act’ (Giddens 1994b:75). Not only this, but, as suggested, such an
order questions the nature of taken-for-granted identities such as ‘working-
class’, ‘woman’ or ‘socialist’. The result of which is that the choices we make in
a post-traditional order reflect, and help constitute, the nature of our identity.
For example, a trip to the supermarket may confront us with a variety of coffee
to purchase. When confronted with such a choice our preference would not be
shaped solely by taste but also by other factors: should we purchase fair trade
coffee or rainforest alliance? Should we boycott certain companies? Should
we purchase coffee from certain countries and not others? and so on. These
questions will in turn be shaped by the ideas we have of ourselves: are we an
‘ethical’ shopper? Are we ‘green’? Such choices reflect our sense of who we are
and want to be. Consequently, in a post-traditional order:
This then leads onto the second significant factor about late modernity: reflex-
ivity. This operates at two levels. Firstly, we as individuals become more reflex-
ive. As suggested above, late modernity forces us to consider our actions and
the reasons for them. This is partly due to the increased knowledge we hold and
what it means for our actions; to use Giddens’ terms we increasingly engage
with ‘expert’ or ‘abstract’ systems (Giddens 1990:83–91). For example, it is
only by becoming aware, at least at a rudimentary level, of the science behind
climate change that we begin to adjust our actions (for example, by using plas-
tic bags less). Indeed, for Giddens, it is the fact we are increasingly knowledge-
able, reflexive and questioning – as he puts it, we’re increasingly ‘clever people’
(Giddens 1994a:7) – that tradition breaks down (Giddens 1994b:61–6).
This individual reflexivity then influences how we relate to each other, for
example, our intimate relationships include a form of dialogical democracy
where ‘free and open communication’ as part of a negotiation as equal partners
concerning the status and future of a relationship becomes the expectation (Gid-
dens 1992:194). All of these processes are, for Giddens, an attempt to obtain
‘ontological security’ which is ‘the confidence that most human beings have
in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding
social and material environment of action’ (Giddens 1990:92). Therefore, our
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is a politics, not of life chances, but of life style. It concerns disputes and
struggles about how (as individuals and as collective humanity) we should
live in a world where what used to be fixed either by nature of tradition
is now subject to human decisions. (Giddens 1994a:14–15)
The factors discussed above, the environment, changing gender roles and the
increase in expert knowledge at a daily level, all create political choices for the
‘clever people’ of late modernity. These are political choices not only as they
concern questions of right and wrong, but also in the sense of determining
what ‘we’ should do collectively as a society. An example of this for Giddens
can be found in intimate relationships. Given the aforementioned change to
relationships more marked by gender equality and democratic discussion, our
daily negotiations have political connotations (such as the correct division of
labour between men and women) which do not just impact us but have a
wider significance. For instance, they change the way in which we educate
children on sex and personal relationships (Giddens 1994a:154–5). Therefore,
the increased political decisions and questions of everyday life, by encourag-
ing debate and equality, enhance the possibility for democracy more broadly
(Giddens 1992:195).
The increased prominence of life politics has come at the expense of ‘eman-
cipatory politics’ which was concerned with ‘liberating individuals and groups
from constrains which adversely affect their life chances’ (Giddens 1991:210).
Shaped by the dominant political perspectives of modernity (liberalism, social-
ism and conservatism) this form of politics was concerned with questions of
justice, equality and participation. Therefore they appealed to groups who
needed assistance to achieve such goals (Giddens 1991:210–14). For example,
as we have seen throughout this book, some theorists base their alternative
around some connection of socialism and class, most notably for Marx and
Engels but also to some extent for Du Bois, James and Lefebvre. As we also
saw, it was the supposed breaking of the connection between these two which
caused problems for Marcuse. For Giddens, such an emancipatory politics con-
tained only a limited conception of freedom. It ensured some freedom from
constraints but not, automatically, freedom to make choices of lifestyle (Gid-
dens 1991:213). Emancipatory politics’ contemporary appeal has also been
greatly curtailed by its success; in ensuring greater levels of equality and jus-
tice, it has opened the path for life politics and its concern with how we make
choices given this shared level of emancipation. Consequently, for Giddens,
everyone engages in life politics; in an oft-cited claim, he argues that a poor, sin-
gle, black mother is required to make life-political choices as much as anyone
else (Giddens 1991:85–6).
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It is here that we find Giddens’ critique: while the nature of politics at the
micro level has changed away from emancipatory politics and towards life-
political choice politics at the macro level has remained largely stable, as seen
in the welfare state. This was developed, and still largely rests upon, the model
of the male full-time worker and therefore does not fully account for differ-
ent types of working, whether this be part-time, flexible or temporary work
as well as the increased inclusion of women in the labour market (Giddens
1994a:141). Furthermore, the welfare state continues to work largely along
class lines. Imagining welfare recipients in a relatively unchanging position and
location which conditions their life it seeks to achieve some level of equality
through the redistribution of goods and wealth. This is flawed for Giddens
when the cleavages of class are not so sharp and when people’s life trajectories
no longer match simple ideas of being ‘working’ or ‘middle’ class (Giddens
1994a:143–4). This reliance on redistribution has also helped to develop a ‘cul-
ture of poverty’ found in the underclass by not allowing such groups to make
choices to escape their position (Giddens 1994a:148).
These problems of the welfare state have, for Giddens, been especially prob-
lematic for sociologists and politicians tied to a left-wing programme since
socialism has increasingly become defined by its support for an outdated
welfare state. Whereas conservatives have ‘become radical’ in their lessening
attachment to tradition in favour of neoliberalism, socialists have ‘become con-
servative’ in their unthinking defence of the redistributive welfare state (Gid-
dens 1994a:7). In turn, for Giddens, the welfare state is not aiding the complex
negotiations and choices of life politics in late modernity, such as the increasing
number of female divorcees who have to decide how to carry out the roles of
‘mother’ and ‘woman’ while negotiating the pressures of those roles, such as
work and childcare (Giddens 1994a:91).
Therefore, Giddens’ alternative is concerned with changing the nature of the
welfare state. He developed this approach alongside the emergence of the New
Labour project in the UK, led by the Prime Ministers Tony Blair (1997–2007)
and Gordon Brown (2007–10) giving Giddens the self-declared honorific
‘Blair’s Guru’ (Giddens 2000).
Giddens was one of the central figures in the development of ‘The Third
Way’. While sharing the name of Mannheim’s alternative, this was a different
approach which sought to utilise social democratic values in a globalized capi-
talist society. While Giddens was one of the key players in the debate, publish-
ing a book laying out Third Way philosophy (Giddens 1998a) he was not alone.
Blair published his own views (Blair 1998) as part of a wider global debate (see
Giddens 2001). While politicians would claim they were inspired by, or even
applying, Giddens’ ideas, there were notable differences between Blair’s Third
Way and that of Giddens (Leggett 2005). However, it should also be noted
148 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
that Giddens has downplayed such differences by claiming New Labour were
broadly faithful to his work (Giddens 2004).
The Third Way defines its goal as helping citizens negotiate the changes of late
modernity since ‘the overall aim of third way politics should be to help citizens
pilot their way through the major revolutions of our time: globalization, trans-
formations in personal life and our relationship to nature’ (Giddens 1998a:64).
The major idea Giddens outlines to allow this to happen is ‘positive welfare’.
For Giddens, the problem with the current welfare state is that it works ‘nega-
tively’ since it seeks to solve problems after they have occurred (for example
by providing healthcare for people who are already sick). This was acceptable
when the welfare state was dealing primarily with the structural flaws coming
from class inequality and emancipatory politics; you could, for example, redis-
tribute wealth to lessen already existing poverty (Giddens 1998a:10). However,
in a life-political system, this is no longer feasible. Instead, positive welfare, ‘the
mobilizing of life-political measures, aimed once more at connecting autonomy
with personal and collective responsibilities’ (Giddens 1994a:18), is the appro-
priate path. Positive welfare measures are concerned with empowering people
to make certain choices or to avoid certain risks. Giddens provides examples
of such policies including encouraging lifestyles which lessen the risk of cancer,
making cars safer, lowering speed limits to avoid road accidents, providing
relationship training and therapy to avoid unnecessarily acrimonious break-
ups and/or domestic violence and stigmatising smoking to remove its link with
masculinity (Giddens 1994a:153–5). Also, this would allow individuals to pur-
sue more ecologically friendly lives (Giddens 1994a:247).
These are examples of what Giddens sees as a wider change to the nature of
the welfare state towards allowing life-political choices. He terms this a poli-
tics of ‘second chances’, where we change our identity and activity at various
points across our life (Giddens 1994a:172). The possibility for such a politics
is partly based upon what he terms a ‘post-scarcity society’. While this is yet
to come into existence, it is possible that the conditions of reflexivity and our
awareness of the environmental damage of industrialisation will encourage an
economy where economic growth is no longer our central concern. Rather than
focusing on the ‘bads’ of capitalism, we should use the ‘goods’ of capitalism to
orientate economic production towards life politics (Giddens 1994a:100–2).
This requires adjusting our understanding of work; for example, rather than
set a mandatory retirement age, we should create the possibilities of moving in
and out of the labour market across the life course (Giddens 1994a:183–4). It
also requires a different conception of equality, from a purely material focus
towards the equality of ‘human capital’ (Diamond and Giddens 2005). All of
these changes are united by intending to allow life-political choices to be made
freely and a move away from a ‘welfare’ state to a ‘social investment’ state
(Giddens 1998a:117).
While Giddens places a large degree of emphasis on reflexive actors mandat-
ing such changes to welfare via their engagement in life politics – the demand
for ‘democratizing democracy’ (Giddens 1998a:71) central to contemporary
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As we have seen, Giddens’ critique rests upon the idea that while life politics
has become an increasingly central part of the reflexive late modern order, wel-
fare states and political parties have not kept up with these changes. In order
to overcome this Giddens argues we should engage in constructing forms of
‘positive welfare’ which allow for life-political claims to be made. This is part
of a wider strategy of ‘generative politics’ which helps bring conditions which
allow for life-political claims into being.
Giddens defends his alternative as based upon an idea of ‘utopian realism’
whereby utopian conceptions of the good society are tempered by and adjusted
to what is possible in the here and now (Giddens 1990:154–8). In this sense,
he claims that his alternative would solve his critique by allowing for life-
political actors to make the reflexive choices which mark out a late modern
society where emerging post-scarcity has moved us away from the concerns
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emphasised state action to tackle climate change, the difference with Giddens’
later work is that the political movements, such as the Green movement, are
not considered part of this.
Giddens has defended himself against such charges, arguing that being ‘an
intellectual in politics’ ultimately means you will be attacked from both sides.
Nevertheless, communicating academic ideas to a wider audience is impor-
tant enough to overcome such criticisms (Giddens 2007b). This indicates an
important component of sociological alternatives. Resting as they do on a cri-
tique, being in the position of Giddens – being part of the ruling institutions of
society – makes such critique more challenging, as we saw from Dorothy Smith
in Chapter 1. Indeed, it can lead you to claim that Muammar Gaddafi was a
leader who could create a ‘Norway of North Africa’ and who presided over a
state which was ‘not especially repressive’ (Giddens 2007c). Furthermore, seek-
ing to obtain influence with a political party may go hand in hand with over-
looking some things about that party with which one disagrees. Such tensions
led Edward Said to recommend:
keep reminding yourself that as an intellectual you are the one who can
choose between actively representing the truth to the best of your ability
and passively allowing a patron or an authority to direct you. For the
secular intellectual, those gods always fail. (Said 1994:121)
We will now turn to Ulrich Beck who, while having some links to government
in Germany, maintained his position as an intellectual much more securely than
Giddens.
Ulrich Beck
Beck was born in 1944 in the town of Stolp in Germany (now Słupsk in Poland).
He initially enrolled to study law and philosophy in Frieburg but ended up in
Munich studying sociology, where he would spend much of his professional
life. While Beck began his career writing on the sociologies of work, knowledge
and the Frankfurt School he became ‘simply sociologically famous’ (Sørenson
and Christiansen 2013:xix), with the publication of his Risk Society: Towards
a New Modernity in 1986. From here his work began to move into areas such
as climate change, politics and, increasingly, globalization. It was this that led
Beck into a wider project concerning cosmopolitanism. As we shall see, this
had two goals: firstly the empirical one of seeking to understand the nature of
an increasingly cosmopolitan world and secondly, attempting to create the cos-
mopolitan sociology which Beck saw as lacking. The second of these concerns
kept Beck, unlike Giddens, much more based within academia and the circles
of sociology. However, he did engage in some public activities. For instance,
he served on the review group which put an end to Germany’s policy of build-
ing nuclear power stations and was part of the Spinelli group, a collection of
152 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
politicians and academics who campaign for a federalised European state. Beck
died unexpectedly in January 2015 of a heart attack.
When asked about the links between his work and that of Beck, Giddens
replied, ‘I’ve become so close to Ulrich Beck over the past few years that I can
no longer easily disentangle which ideas are his and which mine’ (Giddens
et al. 2001:247). While this can downplay the differences between the two, as
we shall see, they do share a common concern with the emergence of late, or in
Beck’s terms, ‘second’ modernity.
Beck, like Giddens, believes we have entered a new stage of modernity, which
is marked by a process of ‘reflexive modernization’ (Beck et al. 1994). This
involves ‘a radicalisation of modernity which breaks up the premises and con-
tours of industrial society and opens paths to new modernities or counter-
modernities’ (Beck 1997:17). As this indicates, modernity becomes reflexive in
the sense that it begins to question its basic premises, achievements and goals.
We become aware of the successes of modernity, but also with the unintended
consequences and side effects of those successes. As with Giddens, climate
change is a key example here. On the one hand this is a marker of the suc-
cesses of modernity – industrialisation has expanded and increased the stand-
ard of living for many around the world – but, on the other hand, this had the
unintended consequence of warming the planet and potentially causing drastic
environmental damage (Beck 1995).
This is where we encounter Beck’s most famous concept: the risk society. For
Beck, this concept is not meant to say that society is now more risky; instead
we now become more concerned with identifying and calculating risk, thereby
hoping to avoid the catastrophes which would occur if a risk was not identified
and stopped (Beck 1992). There are three reasons why this happens. Firstly, as
we have seen, we become aware of the unintended consequences of modern
advances, whether this is climate change (Beck 1992:74), the nuclear fallout
at Chernobyl (Beck 2006b:341) or forms of international terrorism, such as
the events of 9/11 (Beck 2002). Such occurrences for Beck mean that risk cal-
culation has become one of the key elements of reflexive modernisation (Beck
1992:22). Secondly, as the above examples indicate, such risks are global and
through their impacts ‘undermine the borders of nation states’ (Beck 1992:47).
This fundamentally changes the international order of nations who are forced
to interact and collaborate since ‘no nation can cope with its problems alone’
(Beck 2006b:342). Finally, for Beck risks are ‘social constructions based upon
corresponding relations of definition’ (Beck 2009:30), meaning they are defined
by what we socially consider important. Therefore, like wealth, risks are dis-
tributed throughout society with different groups encountering different risks/
impacts of risks (Beck 1992:19). However, unlike wealth, they are something
we all inevitably confront in some form since risks come to be ascribed with
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citizenship and cannot be avoided. As Beck famously put it, ‘poverty is hier-
archic, smog is democratic’ (Beck 1992:36). In a ‘class society’, only some are
impacted by its negative elements, such as poverty; in a ‘risk society’, all are
impacted by risk; climate change will not stop at the borders of rich nations or
the houses of the wealthy.
Such changes alter the nature of contemporary societies and political forma-
tions. The failure of science to predict these side effects and its contradictory
messages – is this food ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for you? – means that for Beck we come
to be distrusting of its findings and consequently ‘there is no expert on risk’
(Beck 1992:29). Furthermore, since risks don’t impact identifiable groups in the
same way as class inequalities we no longer have protests where a group claims
‘we’re angry’ but instead have lots of claims that ‘I’m afraid’ (Beck 1992:43);
for instance different groups come together to protest against climate change.
These individualized forms of political protest exacerbate another key part of
second modernity: individualization.
For Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002:203) individualization occurs ‘when
the individual is removed from traditional commitments and support’. Like
Giddens, and for broadly the same reasons, they believe we are living in a post-
traditional order. This order shapes individualization since:
contracts. Beck terms such a change the ‘Brazilisation of the West’: the sys-
tem of ‘nomadic multi-activity’ where ‘people are travelling vendors, small
retailers or craftworkers, offer all kinds of personal service, or shuttle back
and forth between different fields of activity’ found in developing nations
such as Brazil and now spreading to ‘developed’ nations (Beck 2000b:1–2).
This has been encouraged by the changing gender regimes of work away
from the male-only form of work society towards the mixed employment of
risk society.
This brings us to the nature of society as cosmopolitan for Beck. As we
have seen, cosmopolitanism is ultimately a way of viewing the world which
Beck terms ‘the recognition of difference, both internally and externally’ (Beck
2006a:57). As we also saw, this is often conceived as a goal to be achieved and
here Beck both agrees and disagrees with such a definition. His claim is that
‘we do not live in an age of cosmopolitanism but in an age of cosmopolitani-
zation’ (Beck and Grande 2010:417). There are certain factors, which I will
outline below, which mean that we have achieved a state of ‘banal cosmo-
politanism’ whereby, at the everyday level, ‘the differentiations between us and
them are becoming confused, both at the national and at international level’
(Beck 2006a:10). Not only have the boundaries separating people of different
nations become less sharp but, for Beck, we have become aware of this, lead-
ing to lessening xenophobia (Beck 1997:75) and, in the most radical reading,
meaning there is ‘no other any more’ (Beck 2012a:9).
We have already seen some of the factors which create this banal cosmopoli-
tanism for Beck, such as climate change, global terrorism, nuclear fallout and
transnational inequalities. There are others including ‘world families’ where
the members of the family come from different regions of the globe and often
live apart (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014); the ‘place polygamy’ created when
members of such families have multiple homes and relatives in different coun-
tries (Beck 2000a:72–7); awareness of global diseases, potential or not, such as
the BSE (so-called ‘Mad Cow disease’) crisis over tainted beef (Beck 2006b);
transnational political groupings such as the World Bank and NATO (Beck
2006a:85–7) and, of course, global capitalism. Though we may be critical of the
operating of global capitalism each nation is required to bend to its demands
since ‘there is only one thing worse than being overrun by big multinationals:
not being overrun by multinationals’ (Beck 2005b:150).
Therefore, as we have seen, second modernity for Beck is a society with
many new challenges and formations. These include the expansion of risk
calculation due to reflexive modernisation, individualization and its role in
limiting the importance of ‘traditional’ inequalities which are reduced to
‘zombie categories’; changing forms of work; and an emerging ‘banal cos-
mopolitanism’. We have also seen that resting behind all of these factors is a
conception of a global society which allows them to occur. It should be noted
that to this point we have not encountered Beck’s critique. All of the above
are empirical descriptions of changes that have happened. In what follows,
we shall see this critique.
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equates society with nation-state societies, and sees states and their gov-
ernments as the cornerstones of a social sciences analysis. It assumes that
humanity is naturally divided into a limited number of nations, which on
the inside, organize themselves as nation-states, and on the outside, set
boundaries to distinguish themselves from other nation-states … Indeed,
the social science stance is rooted in the concept of the nation-state. It is a
nation-state outlook on society and politics, law, justice and history, that
governs the sociological imagination. And it is exactly this methodologi-
cal nationalism that prevents the social science from getting at the heart
of the dynamics of modernization and globalization. (Beck 2007:287)
For Beck, this use of methodological nationalism also relies upon what he
terms a ‘container theory of society’ whereby sociology ‘aligns itself with the
regulatory authority or power of the nation state’ (Beck 2000a:23). So part of
Beck’s critique would be that many of the alternatives discussed thus far – such
as those from Mannheim, Durkheim and James – utilise a container model of
society by seeing their alternative as enacted by a nation-state. Such an assump-
tion, for Beck, rests upon the idea that the nation state has complete control
over what happens within that territory. Beck terms this a ‘clinical loss of real-
ity’ (Beck 2006a:25) and argues sociology has maintained a focus on social sta-
bility at the expense of social change – or, as he prefers, social ‘metamorphosis’
(Beck 2015) – in an era of globalization.
We have seen above some of the factors Beck believes sociology fails to
account for due to its methodological nationalism (such as global families, cli-
mate change and terrorism). This also returns us to class. For him, ‘classes’
only makes sense in a national context (such as the ‘English’ working class
or the ‘French’ bourgeoisie). A cosmopolitan perspective finds this problem-
atic in two ways. Firstly, class tends to emphasise the ‘small inequalities’ found
between people of the same nationality at the expense of the ‘large inequalities’
between nations (Beck 2005c:339). This is especially problematic when these
large inequalities may be played out in the same nation, for example, by the
migration of poor workers to rich nations (Beck and Levy 2013:15). This also
makes any cross-national comparison of countries difficult in light of the fact
that they may have different forms of inequality (Beck 2005c:341). The second
156 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
This is a new variant of critical theory, which does not set the normative
horizon itself but takes it from empirical analyses. Hence, it is an empiri-
cal analysis of the normative horizon of the self-critical world risk society.
(Beck 2015:83)
For Beck, the goal of such a cosmopolitan sociology is to open up new ideas
of the path we should follow based upon an assessment of our emerging cos-
mopolitanism. It seeks to replace the ‘methodological nationalism’ of sociol-
ogy and society with a ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ in which we become
aware of, and further develop, cosmopolitanisation. This is Beck’s alternative
to which we now turn.
Beck, like Giddens, has often been accused of taking his normative visions of
what should happen as empirical description of what is happening. He has
been accused of engaging in ‘rhetorical special pleading’ by presenting cosmo-
politanism as an empirical inevitability (Holton 2009:82). Such a tendency is
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exacerbated by, as we have already seen, Beck’s claim that those who deny
cosmopolitanism experience a ‘clinical loss of reality’ (Beck 2006a:26, 117).
However, also like Giddens, it is possible to identify some gap between
empirical description and normative claims if you look closely enough. These
centre around the desire to develop methodological cosmopolitanism which
involves the awareness and recognition of the shared global nature of contem-
porary society and its problems. Beck terms this a ‘compulsory re-education
programme in openness to the world’ (Beck 2006a:102) which has four com-
ponents: the end of the nation-state principle, cosmopolitan states, a ‘Green
Modernity’ and civil labour. I will discuss these in turn.
As we saw, for Beck the nation-state principle was responsible for legitimis-
ing global inequalities. Therefore, the adoption of a cosmopolitan perspective
is central for Beck. While, as we shall see below, the institutions of governments
should be changed this is also a process which occurs from the bottom-up. ‘Sub-
politics’ is the name Beck gives to something akin to Giddens’ life politics but
much more focused on movements rather than individuals. When these move-
ments respond to everyday issues (the placing of a nuclear plant, the wages of
workers), they also respond to global concerns (fears of nuclear fallout, the
global division of labour) and therefore, by forcing governments to answer
their concerns, encourage a cosmopolitan view (Beck 1997:97–109). Such
movements were central to governmental action over climate change (Beck
1995). Therefore, such sub-political action should continue and expand for
Beck; this is especially the case in Europe where the European Union requires
a collection of movements forming a ‘Europe from below’ which proclaims the
shared interests of European citizens (Beck 2013b:83–6).
This then brings us to the second part of Beck’s alternative: cosmopolitan
states. The end of the nation-state principle will require the end of the nation-
state as the primary mode of governance in society. Nation-states remain but
these must become part of ‘cosmopolitan states’ who are, and conceive them-
selves as, part of a global order (Beck and Levy 2013). The European Union
(EU) is in many ways a model of the cosmopolitan state Beck favours, devel-
oping via shared concerns and identity as European. While this involves rec-
ognition of European diversity it also requires some taming of such diversity
to achieve union (Beck 2005a:156). In doing so, for Beck, as a condition of
entry to the EU democracy and human rights are placed ‘above autocracy and
nationalism’ and the cosmopolitan order affirmed (Beck 2005a:156).
The problem is that the EU has increasingly become a ‘European Empire’,
or a ‘German Europe’, under the control of a particular group of politicians
and bureaucrats (Beck 2013b). Therefore, Beck argues we need to develop
the ‘Europe of citizens’ by instituting mechanisms which allow its citizens to
engage in Europe from below (Beck 2012b:111–18). These include a European
constitution (Beck and Grande 2007:228), Europe-wide referenda and elec-
tions (Beck and Grande 2007:235), something akin to the Peace Corps where
the EU funds the civic activity of the unemployed youth of the continent (Beck
2012b:118) and a ‘European year’ which would fund everyone to spend a year
158 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
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This optimistic reading of action across borders and the ‘Europe from below’
also feed into the fourth part of Beck’s alternative which concerns work. As we
have seen, Beck argues the era of full work has ended and been replaced with
flexible work in which we change our professions and working conditions on
a regular basis. This, in and of itself, is not negative; what is negative is that it
has been enforced and not chosen. Instead, what we should do is to make this
a choice since:
Only if the insecure new forms of paid employment are converted into a
right to multiple work, a right to discontinuity, a right to choose working
hours, a right to sovereignty over working time enshrined in collective-
bargaining agreements – only then can new free spaces be secured in the
coordination of work, life and political activity. Every person would thus
be enabled to plan his or her own life over a period of one or more years,
in its transitions between family, paid employment, leisure and political
involvement, and to harmonize this with the claims and demands of oth-
ers. (Beck 2000b:7)
Therefore, we should choose how we work and when we do and do not work.
The periods in which we are not working are when we can engage in ‘civil
labour’, which would include the European year but would also include vol-
unteering work for civic and political causes, such as climate change. In return
for this civil labour we would receive ‘civil money’ which includes free access
to services and/or a say in running them (Beck 2000b:121–49). This system
for Beck would further the potential for a Europe from below by giving peo-
ple the time and resources to engage in European civil society (Beck 2000c).
Beck also argues that offers of new jobs, especially when these involve moving
home, should come with the expectation that the spouse be offered a job as
well. This ensures the possibility for the mobility of global families within the
nuclear family format, which Beck and Beck-Gernsheim see as somewhat inevi-
table as well as ecologically friendly (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995:163–7).
Therefore, the expectations regarding work should be changed to achieve three
things: allow flexibility to be a choice, ensure people have the time for the civic
activity required for a European from below and lessen the pressures on global
families.
Does Beck’s alternative solve his critique? If we accept his claim that we have
a form of banal cosmopolitanism and that we need to adopt a methodological
cosmopolitanism to match this then his alternative does four things. Firstly, by
ending the nation-state principle it changes the way we view the world and our
relation to others and their problems (for example, no longer do we consider
inequality at the national, but rather at the global, level). Secondly, by strength-
ening the EU we achieve a working model of a cosmopolitan state, both at the
macro level (through cosmopolitan realpolitik) and the micro level (through
Europe from below). Thirdly, the development of a Green Modernity means we
reorientate our actions and societies towards environmental protection. Finally,
160 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
the changes to work ensure that the flexibility of second modern work regimes
is a choice and means we have the time to engage in the activities of Europe
from below while maintaining our global families. Of course, it is not clear to
what extent this is a European solution; if cosmopolitanism is truly global, how
does the rest of the world get included? Beck’s solution seems to be effectively
an expansion of bodies like the EU (for example, the African Union should
more fully fit this model) alongside the further expansion and consolidation
of bodies such as the United Nations to help build the ‘global republic’ (Beck
2006a:160). Therefore, the cosmopolitan world is made up of cosmopolitan
nations who, engaging in cosmopolitan realpolitik, realise their need to coop-
erate with regional partners in bodies like the EU while at the global level
institutions such as the UN ensure that global standards of human rights law
are followed. Contrary to today, these bodies have more power and democratic
legitimacy from below. This ensures, for Beck, that the globalized world has a
cosmopolitan regime to match it.
As we have seen, Giddens and Beck are united in seeing the changes of a glo-
balized world as requiring a different perspective from sociologists and society
and, therefore, different alternatives. For both, such alternatives emerge from,
and hope to develop, the incipient or ‘banal’ cosmopolitanism of late modern
society. In doing so, they draw upon ideas of a post-traditional order and the
need to move beyond traditional political ways of solving issues whether this
be the traditional welfare state or methodological nationalism. Instead, both
favour an alternative which allows groups to make active choices (through
positive welfare or civic labour) and increases the forms of global govern-
ments by developing cosmopolitan states, of which they see the EU as a shining
example. In doing so, both see potential for more ecological societies through
either state action (Giddens) or the development of a broader ‘Green Moder-
nity’ (Beck).
Despite such similarities, there is one contradiction between their alternatives
which means they are not entirely compatible. As we have seen, Giddens main-
tains a largely national focus for his alternative. His concern is primarily the
welfare state of Britain; this, as we saw, was somewhat encouraged to his con-
nection to a political party fighting for national power and then his elevation
to the national legislator. Nevertheless, he does see such ‘cosmopolitan nations’
as responding to the demands of globalization and helping bring cosmopolitan-
ism into being. Beck, however, largely rejects the possibility of any alternative
at just a national level. While he does not see nation states dying out, he does
see them as subsumed into, and castrated by, the new cosmopolitan regime. The
potential to think in such a way is perhaps enhanced by the relative lack of con-
nection Beck had to mechanisms of government. In Chapter 5 we introduced
the distinction of legislator and interpreter; the case of Giddens and Beck shows
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anThony GiddenS and Ulrich Beck: coSmopoliTan alTernaTiveS 161
there are different types of legislator. Some, like Beck, seek to legislate outside
parties/forms of government while others, such as Giddens, seek a strong link
to a political party. This helps shape their alternative.
However, there is a further common element of both, which is that it is some-
times hard to see the line between their empirical description (life politics/cos-
mopolitanisation is happening) and their alternative (we need to allow for life
politics/create cosmopolitanism). Instead, their claims are often for more of
what is already happening: more positive welfare, more Europe. As one of the
writers we will consider in the next chapter argues, the positions of Giddens
and Beck ‘do not move nearly far enough from a pro-capitalist ideological posi-
tion. They are too cautious, insufficiently utopian’ (Levitas 2000b:198). So let
us turn to what it means to be utopian.
Sociology and Utopia
9
I wish to defend that ‘unrealistic’, ‘irrational’, ‘naïve’, ‘self-indulgent’,
‘unscientific’, ‘escapist’, ‘élitist’, activity known as utopianism.
(Geoghegan 1987:1)
The above in many ways reflects the attitude of sociology, as well as society
more broadly, to utopia. Indeed, the term ‘utopian’ has increasingly become an
insult, used to dismiss schemes which seem fanciful and/or dangerous. Utopi-
ans, it is argued, are those seeking to implement their vision of a perfect society.
Not only is such a ‘perfect’ society impossible but any attempt to implement it
will inevitably mean un-enticing side effects (such as the removal of those who
don’t fit within the utopia).
Why would sociology want any part of this? Not only do such schemes seem
dangerous, but they are also fanciful. As we saw in Chapter 2, for Marx and
Engels, utopians are to be dismissed due to their reliance on ‘the individual
man of genius’ who somehow has unique insight into the needs of humanity.
Instead, Marx and Engels favoured their ‘scientific’ approach, namely the care-
ful study of what actually does exist, and the potential for alternatives within
this. Following this, it could also be argued the use of utopianism directs atten-
tion away from what I have presented in this book as the first step of sociologi-
cal alternatives: a critique of society as it is. Marx and Engels have not been
alone in their dismissal of utopianism; as we also saw, Mead was critical of the
utopian urges of socialist and Giddens argues utopianism is useless without the
realism to make alternatives plausible.
This chapter will suggest these claims rely upon a limited definition of both
utopia and sociology. For now, the literal definition of utopia as ‘the good place
which is no place’, the good society which doesn’t exist, is a useful guide. As we
shall see, once you broaden the definition of utopianism, it is something sociol-
ogy has always done, continues to do and, it could be said, will inevitably do.
The two theorists to be discussed here are Ruth Levitas and Erik Olin Wright
who approach utopianism in slightly different ways. Whereas Levitas sees it
as a method of sociological analysis, Wright tries to extract utopian potentials
from existing social practices. However, both are united in the idea that being
utopianism is a central part of social theory. Therefore, this chapter, and the
one which follows, moves away from the focus of Chapters 2–8 since, rather
than applying the threefold definition on sociological alternatives, the focus
here is on how sociologists can offer alternatives. While, as we shall see, both
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Sociology and Utopia 163
Levitas and Wright do offer some elements of an alternative – I will discuss the
basic income as a key element of this – this discussion of utopianism primarily
concerns the question of how sociologists offer alternatives. In doing so, I will
refer back to the alternatives outlined thus far.
Here Levitas highlights a theme we have seen throughout the book; social
transformation, the offering of alternatives, has remained part of the discipline.
Yet, despite this, utopianism has often been rejected as for Marx and Engels,
Mead, Mannheim and Giddens. For Levitas, such a dismissal is a mistake.
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Sociology and Utopia 165
Utopias are inevitably shaped by the social context in which they are expressed,
to imagine a utopian state relies on being able to conceive of an alternative and
envisioning how it may be plausible. For Levitas (1979), this inevitably creates
two forms of utopias. In times when individuals have the hope of being able
to influence society, and are open to alternatives – for example in democracies
with high levels of party membership and political groups such as trade unions –
utopias may be quite practical, based upon actions which can be performed in
the here and now. However, in times when achieving such change seems more
difficult or even impossible – such as in life under a dictatorship or at times
of hardship – then utopias are more likely to occur elsewhere and have come
about via the intervention of an outside force, such as God. Therefore, for
Levitas, each social epoch will not lack utopias but may lack hope that such
utopias are plausible.
It is the latter condition which we find ourselves in for Levitas. The increased
dominance of capitalism around the globe and the supposed ‘end of history’
(Fukuyama 1992) means that capitalism is increasingly taken as inevitable. Its
current neoliberal form comes to be justified since ‘there is no alternative’ (Bau-
man 2007b). This means that utopias which suggest an alternative social form
are seen to match the definition of ‘fanciful’ and ‘dangerous’ (Levitas 2000a).
Consequently, utopias take another form; they increasingly become individual-
ized, reflecting quests for individual happiness or interests rather than societal
transformation (Kumar 1987, Levitas 2003). As Bauman (2003) has put it, we
currently have ‘utopia with no topos’, conceptions of the good life which don’t
rely on the imaginary reconstruction of society which unites groups.
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Sociology and Utopia 167
It is here that sociology can fill this gap for Levitas. Sociologists, perhaps
more than anyone else, take a holistic view of society and engage in critique.
As we have seen throughout this book being critical and arguing certain things
are negative implies some idea of a good society. The result is that much criti-
cal sociology, including for Levitas almost all the thinkers we have considered
in this book, should be considered ‘utopian’. Their work expresses a longing
for a better way of being/living though it will not necessarily recognise this as
a ‘utopia’ due to the incorrect assigning of this to the impossible or fanciful.
Furthermore, even before questions of alternatives enter into sociology to be
‘critical’ involves some utopianism. For example:
Therefore, the idea of a better world is central to critique despite much ‘critical’
sociology being reluctant to speak of utopia. Yet, for Levitas:
Wells is surely right that sociologists carry silent utopias in their work,
both as inspiration and substance. Most sociologists who work in fields
of social inequality – economic inequality, class, gender, ethnicity – are
driven by a critical conviction that these inequalities are damaging and
wrong. Somewhere underpinning this is an implicit idea of a good society
in which such inequalities are absent. (Levitas 2010:538)
There is a simple explanation why sociologists have foregone utopia: the battle
for scientific recognition made it unattractive. From when Marx and Engels
separated their socialism from its utopian sibling social theory has sought to
claim a scientific basis for its claims, including its alternatives, echoed in some
of the claims discussed in this book. However, for Levitas, utopian literature,
such as Morris, continued to make use of sociological claims for their work and
sociologists continued to carry their ‘silent utopias’ of worlds without class/
race/gender inequality and so on. This means that, even if sociologists do not
offer utopias, ‘sociology foregrounds what utopia backgrounds, while utopia
foregrounds what sociology represses’. More simply, we can see ‘sociology as
utopia and utopia as sociology’ (Levitas 2013:84, 91).
In order to bring this into the open and incorporate utopianism further into
sociology Levitas argues we should think of utopia as method (Levitas 2013).
This method allows us to both critique ideals which currently exist and offer
our own alternatives. This has three steps:
interested in. What are the ideas of a good society we find in the advocates
of meritocracy? From the bourgeoisie? From Occupy Wall Street? From a
political party? In doing this we can begin to point out problems; maybe
some claims contradict others or, perhaps, these ideas rely upon other more
unattractive factors (for example, they require high levels of inequality).
2. Utopia as ontology – this comprises two factors. The first is how human
nature is conceived of in these images of the good society. If you conceive of
humans as fundamentally selfish your conception of a ‘good’ society will be
different to if you conceive of them as altruistic. The second factor is what
Bloch termed the ‘education of desire’; that is, many utopias may involve
people’s nature being changed in reaching that end goal. An example of this
would be Marx’s claim that it is only in the second stage of communism
that inequality could be lessened since people would need to lose their capi-
talist ways of thinking during the first stage. Again, here there is space for
criticism for how humans are imagined or the steps suggested for how they
will change. We may indeed here find some ‘dangerous fools’ who believe
that a perfect society can be implemented against the desires of others (Sar-
gisson 2012:243).
3. Utopia as architecture – finally, we can construct the utopian world offered
in these visions by using IROS. Here a final stage of criticism can occur by
pointing out flaws in such visions, as well as allowing us to offer our own
alternatives.
Therefore, these three steps allow sociology to reclaim the ideals offered by
Wells as a discipline involving critique and the offering of utopian alternatives.
IROS is both a method of critique and of offering utopian alternatives. This is
something Levitas has attempted to do in her own discussion of neoliberalism.
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The first step is the archaeological; what visions of the good society are
offered by these governments? There are five common factors here. The first is
the importance of work, through which individuals are seen as socially valu-
able and making a contribution. As an example, for the British Conservative
government, society can be divided into ‘strivers’ (those who work hard and
are deserving of help) and ‘shirkers’ (those who avoid work and do not deserve
such help). This then leads to the second factor; ‘work’ in these ideals is only
activity for which one is paid. Taking care of children is not work, unless you
are hired to do it and receive a wage in return. Thirdly, such ideas emphasise the
family. This is seen as not just as a moral good but also in making us who we
are. Importantly, with the introduction of same-sex marriage, while such ideas
increasingly no longer rely upon a heterosexual couple, it remains a married
couple heading a nuclear family. Fourthly, community is also seen as valued. A
good society is one in which we contribute towards our local community and
know our neighbours. Finally, some, though not all, increasingly draw upon
ideas of being ‘green’; a good society makes use of renewable energy and has
‘sustainable’ growth to ensure climate change is not exacerbated.
With the archaeological mode complete we can already highlight some issues
here, such as the restriction of work – you are not contributing by taking care
of your own children, but if you leave the house and take care of other people’s
children for pay then you are – as well as contradictions – family and com-
munity are central, but you need to be working full time. This also means we
can discuss the ontological mode. For Levitas, such ideals imagine individuals
as driven by a work ethic who, while remaining work-driven, are transformed
into community-focused, family-orientated and active volunteers. If the contra-
dictions weren’t already clear, they become so in the architectural element when
the utopian world is constructed, as in the following:
In Blair’s fantasy land, the rich deserve their wealth and are not resented.
The poor have presumably abolished themselves through the saving grace
of working in McDonald’s and call centres, ventures indirectly subsidised
through tax credits. Children have stopped playing truant partly through
fear of police sweeps, and partly because they understand the conse-
quences of educational failure. Teenagers do not have unprotected sex.
People accept their obligation to maintain their employability, so that
they can exploit the changing opportunities provided by markets, make
individual provision against risk, discharge their obligations as parents
and active citizens when they have done earning a living. (They are too
tired to protest on May Day, and know anyway that all demonstrators
are anarchists, meaning mindless thugs, or anti-capitalists, meaning much
the same.) Continuing growth ensures a rising tax take without increased
tax rates. Public funds can thus be used to underwrite essential services,
mainly contracted out to the private sector where successful businesses
(or, increasingly, multi-national concerns) make profits subsidised out of
taxation. (Levitas 2001:458–9)
170 Social theory for alternative SocietieS
This process of IROS begins to show the problems inherent in the utopias of
neoliberalism for Levitas. The utopian method provides a distinct critique, one
focused on the end goals of such policies, rather than on their impact in the here
and now. Therefore, it can lead sociologists to claim that ‘the promotion of post-
material values and well-being is utterly ideological unless they are intrinsically
linked to distributive and gender justice and a reorientation of the economy to
need rather than profit’ (Levitas 2012:338). It leads to an alternative utopia.
This of course raises the question of what exactly this alternative would be
and what the architectural vision of utopia Levitas would like to draw is. I will
return to Levitas’ utopia later in this chapter; before that let us turn to our sec-
ond utopian thinker, Erik Olin Wright.
Wright is well known for his work on class, where he has developed Marx-
ian class analysis to incorporate the complex relations of production found
in a contemporary capitalist economy (Wright 1985, 1997). This work has
made notable contributions to what is called ‘open’ or ‘analytical’ Marxism
which seeks to develop Marxist thought through the use of large-scale empiri-
cal, often quantitative, analysis. More importantly for this chapter he has, since
the early 1990s, been involved in the ‘real utopias’ project. Across a series of
books Wright and his collaborators have sought out examples of current prac-
tices which suggest the potential for an alternative world, including democratic
associations (Cohen and Rogers 1995), radical democracy (Fung and Wright
2003) and gender equality (Gornick and Meyers 2009). These are ‘real uto-
pias’, examples of a better world whose potential can be seen in the current day.
Before that, we need to confront a seeming contradiction: is it possible to
be Marxist and utopian? As discussed, Marx and Engels dismissed utopian
socialism in favour of their materially grounded, scientific form. Furthermore,
as noted in Chapter 6, many contemporary Marxists have shared this aversion
to utopian speculation, the exception to this being Marcuse. However, his uto-
pianism was limited since he argued we were at the ‘end of utopia’ (Marcuse
1967); we no longer had to be utopian in thought since the conditions for a
utopian transformation (abundance and technological means) were now at our
disposal. Hence his embrace was the also the rejection of utopianism as an
alternative to come.
Wright differentiates himself from this anti-utopian tradition of Marxism.
He does so by turning to first principles. What defines Marxism for Wright is
not its anti-utopianism but the fact that it is an ‘emancipatory social science’,
in which:
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This emancipatory social science relies on an idea of justice; for full emancipa-
tion a society must be both socially and politically just. Social justice requires
that everyone has ‘equal access to the necessary material and social means to live
flourishing lives’ implying some form of economic equality (Wright 2010:12).
Political justice focuses more on how decisions are made and requires that indi-
viduals have the opportunity to ‘make choices that affect their lives as separate
persons’ and ‘to participate in collective choices that affect them because of the
society in which they live’ (Wright 2010:18). Any social science which holds
this principle must then, for Wright, be critical of capitalism along the broadly
Marxist lines outlined in Chapters 2 and 6. Consequently, an emancipatory
social science is concerned with alternatives.
However, we don’t, and can’t, know when such alternatives will come into
being; Wright’s (2010:22) example here is the USSR in 1987. At this point it
seemed incomprehensible that communism would fall and be replaced with
capitalism. Yet, only two years later, exactly that process had begun. Had con-
sideration of alternatives to communism began earlier, despite their seemingly
implausibility, the transition may have been smoother and there would have
been guiding ideas for a more just alternative. Therefore, it behoves us to con-
sider what alternatives are desirable and how they may work.
As a result, for Wright, any Marxist sociology which believes in the necessity
and inevitably of social change but does not pretend to know when this will
happen is required to consider alternatives (Wright 2000:155). When doing so
we can use the ideas of socialism as a ‘compass’ (Wright 2006). This compass
will lead us to social and political justice through its central values, which are
(Wright 2010:129):
1. Social empowerment over the way state power affects economic activity.
2. Social empowerment over the way economic power shapes economic
activity.
3. Social empowerment directly over economic activity.
In following these three compass points we can assess how enticing certain
alternatives are to our capitalist order. Therefore, Wright seeks to ground the
offering of utopian alternatives in a Marxist analysis.
Real utopias
Utopian ideals that are grounded in the real potentials of humanity, uto-
pian destinations that have accessible waystations, utopian designs of
institutions that can inform our practical tasks of navigating a world of
imperfect conditions for social change. (Wright 2010:6)
Therefore, a real utopia has some form of expression in the current day (the
‘accessible waystations’) and thereby gives us a path to follow to a better world
(‘inform our practical tasks’). In short, we are looking for things which exist
today which, were they expanded, suggest a more socially and politically just
society. What makes these utopian for Wright is that their existence suggests
the potential for a better world while – here he shares with Levitas a belief in
utopias as processes – inspiring people to act (Wright 2010:1–9).
During the course of the real utopias project Wright has considered many
different examples. However, he has increasingly aligned on four: participatory
city planning, Wikipedia, Mondragón and the basic income. Below, I will dis-
cuss the first three of these and how they fit Wright’s conception of real utopias.
After this will follow an expanded discussion concerning the basic income, a
popular idea in sociology.
Participatory city planning involves a shift in how a city’s budget is decided.
Whereas currently city spending is decided by councillors, under this model,
citizens come together to debate and submit their own spending plans. Such a
system has been in place in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre since 1989 and
forms the basis of Wright’s advocacy. Although interested parties (such as local
businesses) have the opportunity to attend debates it is only the local citizens
who can vote on how money is spent. This fulfils both political and social jus-
tice since not only does it mean citizens have a say in decisions affecting their
activity but also, Wright argues, has resulted in a more progressive distribu-
tion of funds towards the poorer parts of the city. Furthermore, the meetings
themselves have remained popular with sustainable turnout and engagement
(Wright 2010:155–60).
The next real utopia is Wikipedia. For Wright Wikipedia is an ‘anti-capitalist’
way of organising information. Since it is free to access and allows anyone to
contribute it is ‘based upon the principle “to each according to need, from
each according to ability”’ (Wright 2010:3) which, as we saw in Chapter 2,
was Marx’s definition of the higher stage of communism. Therefore, for
Wright, Wikipedia includes many of the principles of political justice, not only
in terms of open access and contribution but also in the fact it encourages
debate among its members and users, utilising democratic mechanisms to solve
any disagreement (Wright 2010:194–9). While, as Wright (2010:200–4) notes,
there is some controversy over the extent to which Wikipedia was founded as
an anti-capitalist rather than a libertarian basis, he argues that the intention
is less important than what he sees as its socialist operation now. It is also
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Sociology and Utopia 173
effective, not just in terms of popularity but also in reporting as few mistakes
as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The third real utopia are cooperatives which, as we saw in Chapter 4, also
inspired Du Bois’ Marxist alternative. Here Wright is especially interested in
worker cooperatives. These are organisations where the workers effectively own
the organisation, determining how it is run and its priorities; the best example
for Wright is Mondragón. This began as a single cooperative in the Basque
region of Spain in 1956 producing paraffin heaters but has since expanded to be
the largest company in that region. It is now a conglomerate of 257 companies,
employing 74,060 people in 41 countries working in finance, industry, knowl-
edge and retail (Mondragón 2015). Each of these companies has its own internal
mechanisms of government in addition to general assemblies for all Mondragón
workers. The appeal of such a system is clear for Wright (2010:240–6); not only
does it assure political justice by giving an outlet for a say in our daily activity
but it can also assure some social justice by allowing for a more just distribu-
tion within the organisation. For example, it can assure that growth in pay for
managers doesn’t outstrip that of non-managers, which has caused some of the
growth of inequality in contemporary capitalism (Piketty 2014).
However, as Wright (2010:244) notes – especially in its expansion overseas –
Mondragón has decreased the number of workers who have voting rights and
has increasingly emphasised the production of profit while downplaying the
democratic ethos (Cheney 1999). For Wright, this indicates that Mondragón,
like all cooperatives, operates in a capitalist market which encourages it to
produce profit and engage in continuous growth. Therefore, a more substantial
change is needed through the combination of all of the real utopias Wright
mentions. It is here that his fourth real utopia, the basic income, is central.
the Green Party in the UK, and the Right, with the Nixon administration hav-
ing given serious thought to introducing a version of the scheme (Fitzpatrick
1999:92–3). As we shall see, there are disagreements concerning the level at
which the basic income should be set, but there is general agreement it should
be enough to sustain a ‘culturally defined respectable standard of living’ which,
for Wright, would be 125 per cent of the poverty line (Wright 2000:149).
The basic income also forms a key part of Levitas’ utopian ideas and alter-
native architecture. As we have seen, Levitas imagines the utopian method as
creating a process towards an end goal. She shares with Wright the commit-
ment to ultimate values we would want to realise but differs in not relying on
things already in existence which embody such values. The utopian method for
Levitas requires we ‘stop and think about where we are trying to get to’ (Levitas
2001:459). This requires an alternative architecture in which:
The good society has equality at its core. It demands the public owner-
ship and control of assets currently in private hands. It requires more than
that. The way we measure wealth and growth is irrational, and underval-
ues human activities of care and nurture. The forms of work generated by
capitalism do not cultivate craftsmanship in the deepest sense. A radically
different form of economy and society orientated to human need rather
than profit is the starting point for fuller, freer, more satisfying human
relationships. (Levitas 2013:215)
This conception of a society based upon equality emerges from Levitas’ empha-
sis on the human qualities (the utopia as ontology element) of dignity and grace
which, for her, are central to a utopian vision. Dignity involves a conception of
humans as social – we gain dignity through our social relations and positions,
which allow us to feel recognised and valued – and also requires everyone to
have a certain standard of living in order to live a life worthwhile (Levitas
2013:200–2). Grace however implies something more fundamentally human:
the ability of humans to act, have their actions realised and seek out good in
the world (Levitas 2013:194–7). Although she does not make a link, dignity is
akin to Wright’s social justice, with its emphasis on access to materials to live a
full life, and grace to his political justice given its focus on the need to have our
desires heard and recognised. In this sense, she and Wright share an emphasis
on the alternative society as a socialist society (Levitas 2013:217).
With the ontology in place, what is the archaeology? What type of good
society is valued here? A good society, for Levitas, based upon equality, calls for
a reconsideration of work (Levitas 2001). Levitas shares Marx’s concern that
work under capitalism is alienating (Levitas 2013:12) but has a more funda-
mental concern with the way that work is conceived. As we saw in her critique
this is too readily conceived of as only ‘paid work’. Also problematic here is the
primacy given to the ‘work ethic’, where work is seen as an end which relies
upon, and reproduces, a capitalist idea of how people act and are accorded dig-
nity (Levitas 2001:462). The good society is one in which this is removed and
the opportunity for different forms of work is accorded to individuals.
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Given this, the basic income is afforded a central place in Levitas’ utopia, as
it is in Wright’s real utopia. Their justification for this can be broken down into
four categories, which share the claims offered by many other advocates of the
basic income (Fitzpatrick 1999). Firstly, the basic income makes all forms of
work equally possible. Since the wage should be enough to live on, it allows
us to perform other activities which currently have to be sidelined in favour of
paid work, such as volunteering (Levitas 2012) and care work (Levitas 2001)
in the ‘non-market’ areas of the economy (Wright 2010:220). Secondly, and
linked to this, it enhances gender equality (Pateman 2004). In a way akin to
the wages for housework policy outlined in Chapter 7 it is suggested to give
recognition to our care-giving activities and provide greater impetus for, and
lessen the excuses against, men taking part in such activity (Wright 2000:150).
Thirdly, it provides a sense of commonality and universality in its provision.
Since everyone receives the basic income, they are invested in maintaining it.
This provides, as Levitas puts it, ‘the means by which collective provision can
be made’ against common social ills (Levitas 2001:463). Finally, it is seen to
develop some form of equality and reduce poverty. By placing the level above
the poverty line, the basic income eradicates poverty. Moreover, by being paid
from taxes it ensures that any surplus value is returned to workers and society,
making it ‘a mechanism to transfer part of the social surplus from the capitalist
market sector to the social economy’ (Wright 2010:220).
More than this, and what makes the basic income a utopian alternative for
these writers, is that it suggests a break with capitalism towards a different
system. We have seen how, for Levitas, the basic income undermines the work
ethic central to capitalism and how, as Wright emphasises, it returns much of
the surplus value to society. Therefore, for both, the basic income is a stepping
stone towards a more socialist society (Wright 2006; Levitas 2013:217). It is
this alternative conception, and the way in which it forces us to question which
already exists, which is important for Levitas since:
The answer to any claim that an alternative will not work must, surely,
invite the rejoinder that global capitalism does not work either, at least
if by ‘work’ you mean meet the minimal conditions of being ecologically
sustainable and delivering decent conditions of life to the vast majority of
the world’s population. (Levitas 2012:335)
But what of the role of the basic income in this alternative? This is not without
its critics, to whom we now turn.
Despite its wide support, the basic income has had a number of critics, a com-
plete catalogue of which is impossible here (see Fitzpatrick 1999). Instead, I
will highlight five criticisms which are especially relevant to the idea of the
basic income as a utopian proposal for helping to create a better world.
176 Social theory for alternative SocietieS
The first of these concerns affordability. The basic income stands out
amidst Wright’s real utopias since, beyond limited pilots, it is an idea rather
than an actuality. This has led some to question whether the money needed
to finance it is readily available (Levine 1995). As we have seen, advocates
of the basic income say it is affordable if we replace all, or at least most,
state benefits with the basic income and use this money, along with the sav-
ings from less bureaucracy, to finance it (Wright 2004). But, as Fitzpatrick
(1999:39) highlights, disagreements on the income occur once we go beyond
a ‘minimal model’ (of say, £20 a week) which would make no difference to
one which actually would be enough to live on. Not all agree with Wright
that it should be 125 per cent of the poverty line, but this seems a roughly
useful guide (Hirst 1994:179), suggesting about £10,000 in the UK (depend-
ing on what measure is used). However, immediately questions can be raised
with that number; that figure is based upon single persons living alone. What
if they have children? Does each child get the same number? Would there be
regional differences (in parts of the UK that amount of money would be use-
ful; in London, much less)? What if people spent all their basic income in one
week or had particular needs (such as disability) which outstrip the amount
of the basic income (White 2004)? Therefore, the basic income may call for
both much higher taxes on capital and income – Fitzpatrick (1999:40) sug-
gests rates of 65–80 per cent at the top end – along with the maintenance of
some welfare state benefits. Some have seen this combination as unattain-
able given the overall cost and need for political consensus (Ackerman and
Alstott 2004).
The second criticism concerns what is often termed the ‘free-loader’ problem
(Bergmann 2004): if people can receive this wage for doing nothing, will a sig-
nificant number do nothing? For Levitas, this is exactly its value since:
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Sociology and Utopia 177
since this has not been tried on a large scale yet, the outcomes are difficult to
predict (Wright 2010:222).
The third criticism hits at the heart of the basic income as a utopian alterna-
tive. Rather than, as Wright and Levitas claim, being one of many factors which
lead us beyond capitalism, it is instead one of the best ways to justify, and
maintain, capitalism. Liberal supporters of the basic income have often justified
it on this basis (Van Parijs 1995) and its supporters include one of the ‘fathers’
of neoliberalism, Milton Friedman (2013). Indeed, as already mentioned, the
one time the basic income came close to being attempted on a large scale was
when a slightly altered version was considered by the Nixon administration in
the US. Two arguments are made for the capitalist value of the basic income
(Fitzpatrick 1999:75–99). The first is that by providing some level of security it
allows for entrepreneurs to take risks and create new businesses. The second is
that, in lessening inequality, it not only removes one key critique of the system
but also ensures that people are able to consume and thereby maintain profit
for capital. If we add to this the fact that the sheer cost of the basic income may
well require a significant level of tax revenue to maintain, it seems questionable
to what extent it will lead to a post-capitalist order.
The fourth criticism actually reverses the above, rather than justify capital-
ism; the sheer amount of resources required to implement the basic income
would mean it would have to come after the end of capitalism rather than help
usher this in (Levine 1995). Providing a basic income may require the state
to own and control all the resources in a society, needing something akin to
socialism. The state would need to have all these resources directly to hand and
would be able to direct them rather than rely upon accessing them via taxes and
depending on the business cycle. While, for socialist advocates of the scheme,
this is not necessarily a problem and indeed some have advocated the basic
income on exactly this basis (Cole 1929:187–9), it would seem to question its
potential as one of Wright’s real utopias.
Finally, as with wages for housework, some have questioned the potential of
the basic income to overcome inequalities of gender. For Fraser (1997), such
an idea rests upon what she terms the ‘caregiver parity’ model. This emphasises
providing mechanisms for some parity of domestic labour and then allowing
families and couples to negotiate how this is divided up. This is likely only to
continue the inequality as men will refuse to take on their share. Instead, Fraser
advocates a ‘universal carer model’ which must ‘ensure that men do the same,
while redesigning institutions so as to eliminate the difficulty and strain’ (Fraser
1997:61). The emphasis should be on ‘deconstructing gender’ (Fraser 1997:62)
to ensure that men are part of the caregiver model. While a basic income may
create the material conditions for this it will not, in and of itself, engage in the
deconstruction of gender.
Therefore, as we have seen, the basic income has its share of supporters and
critics. However, perhaps getting lost in the practicalities of the policy is not a
useful exercise. Using Levitas’ utopia as method, we can think about the basic
income as a utopian orientation point. We may like the type of society in which
178 Social theory for alternative SocietieS
As we have seen in this chapter, sociology has a long and complex relation-
ship to utopianism. While many sociologists have been willing to study uto-
pia as a topic, the idea of sociology itself being utopian, despite early support
from writers such as Wells, never attained much support, even among many
of the advocates of sociological alternatives discussed in this book. However,
contemporary writers such as Levitas and Wright have encouraged sociology
to rediscover these utopian elements as part of a normative project of outlin-
ing a better society. For Levitas utopia is a method which allows us to both
criticise the proclamations of others and construct ideals we progress towards.
Conversely, for Wright, we can find things existing in the here and now which
indicate a possible utopian future; the role of sociology is to highlight these.
Each, in doing so, offers a distinct way of thinking about the role of utopianism
in offering sociological alternatives.
These differences between the two bring us closer to the question of the rela-
tionship between sociology and utopia. Levitas has made some critical com-
ments about Wright’s utopianism, most notably its lack of ‘holism’ (Levitas
2013:144). For her, Wright’s emphasis on real utopias implies an emphasis to
‘scale up’ – take these instances which already exist and expand them in num-
ber and reach. But is it that simple? Can we just multiply Mondragóns? Since
Wright admits that for cooperatives like Mondragón to succeed we need a
more fundamental change; what is that change (Levitas 2013:146)? To answer
this, we need that key part of utopianism: imagination. For Levitas, imagina-
tion allows us to conceive how things we value, such as cooperatives and par-
ticipatory city planning, can be realised. This requires some element of holism;
it requires IROS. But:
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Therefore, we can see a key difference here between Wright and Levitas con-
cerning the role of sociology. For Levitas, one of the reasons why sociology
has such a close link to utopia is that, more than any other discipline, it is
concerned with society as a whole. To close this imagination off is actually to
deny utopianism and return to the ‘scientific pretensions’ of the discipline Wells
decried. Unfortunately, this is what much sociology has done; even if it has
suggested some alternatives, these are often justified by reference to science, as
we have seen. There is also the tendency we saw in Chapter 1, to deny offering
alternatives on such grounds. The result of this is that:
180
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can offer, and have offered, alternatives. This chapter will begin by outlining
Burawoy’s concept before relating it to the sociologists discussed in previous
chapters. Following this I will discuss the wider argument inspired by Burawoy’s
intervention. While many have welcomed Burawoy’s claim, some have seen it
as problematic due to it being unoriginal, unnecessarily politicising sociology
or exaggerating its potential impact beyond the university. I will conclude by
applying these arguments to the case study of Pierre Bourdieu.
Rather than the theoretical nature of the earlier utopians, policy sociologists
were heavily empirical, mostly using quantitative methods. They focused on
studying and ‘solving’ social problems. There were two pressures which led to
the birth of this type of sociology. Firstly, the emergence, especially from the
1940s onwards, of the welfare state provided employment and resources to
sociologists seeking to provide expert advice on how to solve problems, as seen
182 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
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Before turning to how public sociology should be, and is, done, we need to
discuss the question of what sociologists do. This is what Burawoy terms the
‘division of sociological labour’ in which there are four types of sociology, each
dealing with different audiences and types of knowledge (Burawoy 2005a:9–10).
These are:
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For Burawoy, the organic form of public sociology has long been overlooked
and it is only with the emergence of a group of critical sociologists educated in
the charged political atmosphere of the 1960s that it has become a widespread
occurrence (Burawoy 2005b).
There is one type of public sociology which straddles the boundary between
these two categories: teaching. Burawoy does acknowledge the role of teaching
in public sociology, since:
Every year we create approximately 25,000 new BAs, who have majored
in sociology. What does it mean to think of them as a potential public? It
surely does not mean we should treat them as empty vessels into which
we pour our mature wine, nor blank slates upon which we inscribe our
profound knowledge. Rather we must think of them as carriers of a rich
lived experience that we elaborate into a deeper self-understanding of the
historical and social contexts that have made them who they are…Edu-
cation becomes a series of dialogues on the terrain of sociology that we
foster – a dialogue between ourselves and students, between students and
their own experiences, among students themselves, and finally a dialogue
of students with publics beyond the university… As teachers we are all
potentially public sociologists. (Burawoy 2005a:9)
In some ways, all of the sociologists discussed in this book have been ‘public
sociologists’. They have shared Burawoy’s belief that sociology is greater than
‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake’ and, for some, sociologists must live up to
their ‘moral convictions’ (Burawoy 2005d). In doing this, as has been indicated
at points throughout, sociologists have attempted to reach audiences beyond
other academics in a variety of ways.
As Burawoy notes, traditional public sociology has been a particularly followed
path here. This could be found in the earliest sociologists we have discussed, as
in Marx’s frequent contributions (some actually ghost-written by Engels) to the
New York Tribune on topics such as British politics, finance and slavery (Marx
2007). Many of Marx and Engel’s other texts were also written for a wide audi-
ence, such as the Communist Manifesto which aimed at a universal (or at least,
universal proletariat) audience (Hobsbawm 1998) and The Civil War in France
which was Marx’s attempt to make his views public in light of his reputation as
the ‘Red Professor’ behind the scenes of the Paris Commune (Horne 2007:430).
A trend towards traditional public sociology could also be found in the work
of Durkheim. Chapter 3 opened with Durkheim’s claim that sociologists should
‘make a reality of the famous precept: to each according to his labour’ and
closed with his reminder that such ‘political freedom’ was a ‘battle weapon’.
Both of these claims come from a text entitled ‘Individualism and the Intellectu-
als’ (Durkheim 1973) which was originally published in 1898 at the height of
the Dreyfus Affair. This concerned a French army captain named Alfred Drey-
fus who, in 1894, was convicted of treason. It was claimed that Dreyfus had
passed military secrets to the Germans; however, evidence came to light that
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another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, was the real culprit. Dreyfus was
prosecuted and convicted not on the basis of evidence but because of his Juda-
ism. When Esterhazy was acquitted at trial (partly because the French military
concealed evidence) it sparked a national outcry from many who took up Drey-
fus’ cause, quickly becoming known as Dreyfusards. Their cause was sparked
by Emile Zola’s famous J’Accuse, an open letter published on the front page of
a major French newspaper accusing the country of anti-Semitism.
Durkheim was quick to join the Dreyfusards. He became secretary of a local
chapter of the Dreyfusian League for the Defence of the Rights of Human
Rights (which still exists today) and was a signatory of public letters taking up
Dreyfus’ cause (Fournier 2013:285–308). However, the affair quickly became
about more than one army captain. The anti-Dreyfusards attacked their rivals
not just for their religion (many, like Durkheim, shared Dreyfus’ Jewish ances-
try) but for their wider world view, seeing them as advocates of a individualism
which rejected religion in favour of self-interest and a lack of morality.
This claim struck at the very heart of Durkheim’s sociology; as we saw in
Chapter 3, his claim was that modern societies were based on individualism,
which provided our shared moral values. So, in defence of himself, the body
of sociology he was helping bring into being, Dreyfus and the debate about
what type of country France should be Durkheim penned ‘Individualism and
the Intellectuals’ which, written for a mass audience, appeared in Revue Bleue
a weekly political and literary journal after the intended publisher, the widely
read Revue de Paris, had refused it due to not wishing to pick sides (Fournier
2013:295–6). Here Durkheim took the battle to the anti-Dreyfusards claiming
they attacked a straw man:
The anti-Dreyfusards were not only unjust in their actions, but they were in
effect speaking blasphemies, an accusation which would have stung those rally-
ing to the cause of religion. Reading ‘Individualism and the Intellectuals’ today
is to encounter what is in effect one of the great documents of traditional public
sociology.
This traditional public sociology is then shared by other writers we have
discussed. Many of Mannheim’s writings on the Third Way began life as radio
broadcasts or newspaper articles (Mannheim 1943), Marcuse gained his repu-
tation of ‘father of the New Left’ partly through his willingness to give public
lectures and write for their publications (Marcuse 1969b) and Giddens has
used his seat in the House of Lords to make media appearances, write for news-
papers and produce books for a mass audience on topics such as climate change
(Giddens 2011) and the European Union (Giddens 2013).
So Burawoy is correct to argue that traditional public sociology, befitting
the name, has a long history. However, he could be said to exaggerate the new-
ness of its organic counterpart since we have also seen plentiful examples of
this throughout the book. Perhaps the best came from the work of Mead who,
as we saw, utilised his working hypothesis idea of social reform through con-
nection with Chicago-based organisations and social movements. To take one
instance from Mead’s work, his role in establishing the Immigrants Protection
League would seem the archetypal ‘organic’ public sociology Burawoy favours
given its goal of allowing new arrivals to Chicago access to civil society. As we
also saw, Mead’s standpoint of trying to provide space for the ‘genius’ in all,
rather than seeing intellectuals as a particularly skilled elite, fits with the two-
way, bottom-up ethos of organic public sociology. Indeed, during his life Mead
was primarily known as and for his public activities rather than his academic
work. Consequently, many of what we now consider Mead’s ‘academic’ pub-
lications are in fact transcripts of public speeches, blurring the lines between
‘professional’ and ‘public’ sociology (Huebner 2014:25–39).
We can also see further examples of this. Du Bois is an obvious candidate
given his role in activism and helping found the NAACP. As we saw, this shift
to activism was partly based upon a rejection of professional sociology and the
limits of knowledge in solving racism. What was required instead was action. A
further example can be found in feminism. Perhaps more than any other socio-
logical field, feminist researchers are likely to engage in organic public sociol-
ogy (Acker 2005, Collins 2007). This reflects the nature of a discipline which
believes that the personal is political and, like Marxism, is concerned with
praxis (Rowbotham 1973). We saw instances of such activity in Chapter 7. This
included James’ work in co-founding the international Wages for Housework
Campaign as well as Dworkin and MacKinnon’s advocacy work for their anti-
pornography law. Such activity continues in feminist sociology. It can be found,
for example, in the US ‘Sociologists for Women in Society’ (SWS) group. This
was an organisation inspired by the events of the 1969 ASA annual conference
where, with their caucus banned from meeting at the conference, they met in
the basement of a nearby church. The next year the SWS was founded to both
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challenge sexism within professional sociology and to provide space and sup-
port for work outside the academy (Feltey and Rushing 1998). Since 1995 this
group has been awarding a ‘Feminist Activism Award’ to the sociologist who
‘has made notable contributions to improving the lives of women in society’
through their activist work (Sociologists for Women in Society 2014).
Therefore, organic public sociology also has a long history. This is especially
the case in those fields of sociology focused on disadvantaged groups, such as
ethnic minorities and women, a point we will return to below. Furthermore,
it is possible to combine organic and traditional public sociology. For exam-
ple, as mentioned in Chapter 7, James combined her work with the Wages for
Housework campaign with the writing of books and media appearances. Con-
sequently, not only do all forms of public sociology have a long history in the
discipline but we can also see how sociologists move between them.
The above may leave the reader wondering what is exactly new about public
sociology. This is indeed one of the criticisms raised against it, to which we
now turn.
Let us summarise what has come in the chapter thus far. We have seen that for
Burawoy sociology is marked by a fourfold division of labour. In this division
between professional, policy, critical and public sociology, different forms
have been more dominant at particular points of time. However, in an era
of neoliberalism and the increasing opposition between a left-wing sociology
concerned with civil society and a right-wing society intent on marketisation,
it is public sociology which should be, and increasingly is becoming, domi-
nant. There are two ways of practising public sociology: a ‘traditional’ form
which is based on a top-down relationship of communicating research find-
ings beyond sociology by appearing in the media and writing for a mass audi-
ence and an ‘organic’ form which involves a bottom-up working with social
movements and local communities. While, for Burawoy, traditional public
sociology has a long history its organic form only truly becomes widespread
following the turn to critical sociology in the 1970s. A survey of the sociolo-
gists considered in this book suggested that in fact both had a long history in
sociology, with the organic form being especially strong in the feminist and
black radical traditions.
Burawoy’s intervention attracted a lot of attention and, inevitably, some of
these were critical of his ideas. Since it would be impossible to cover all the cri-
tiques of public sociology, the following will focus on a selection which relate
to the overall concern of this book. While some of these critics have taken issue
with the principle behind Burawoy’s advocacy, arguing that sociology should
not be public, most are sympathetic to this sentiment but either disagree with
how Burawoy expresses it or wish to highlight practical obstacles. These criti-
cisms can be grouped into five categories.
190 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
The first, and perhaps major, criticism is that Burawoy assumes a political
consensus in sociology which is not there. As we have seen, Burawoy argues
being a public sociologist is defined by being broadly left wing, pro-civil society
and anti-markets. Some, like Holmwood, are critical of the fact this reduces the
plurality of sociology, since ‘for Burawoy, the fragmentation of sociology is to
be understood as simply a pejorative name for its multiplicity, but multiplicity,
rather than consensus, is the condition for a flourishing sociology’ (Holmwood
2007:52). Sociology has always had a variety of intellectual and political posi-
tions and to present consensus around one position is to remove what makes
sociology unique as a discipline. We have seen such variety in this book with
no one political position being shared by all the writers. Some have taken this
criticism further, arguing that in fact Burawoy’s anti-markets and anti-state
position belies his Marxism rather than any conception of what sociology is
(Calhoun 2005). Burawoy does indeed say that ‘if public sociology is to have a
progressive impact it will have to hold itself continuously accountable to some
such vision of democratic socialism’ (Burawoy 2005b:325). For Brady (2004)
such a Marxist orientation can be seen in Burawoy’s denigration of policy soci-
ology. Despite being concerned with taking sociology beyond the academy and
improving the world, this is somehow not ‘public’ in the same way as public
sociology.
Others however see a more cynical reason for Burawoy turning to the lan-
guage of ‘public’ sociology in recent years since, following the fall of com-
munism, ‘one hears of public sociologies more and more just as one hears of
Marxist sociology less and less. Is this a coincidence?’ (Nielsen 2004:1621).
For these critics it is partly the implicit Marxism which is problematic, but
any value system taken as universal would be problematic. Reflecting argu-
ments from Weber in Chapter 1, these critics see such Marxist values as simply
reflecting individual, rather than disciplinary, beliefs (Nielsen 2004, Boyns and
Fletcher 2005) or unintentionally opening the door to all values – including
ones like racism – being a legitimate part of sociological practice (Smith-Lovin
2007). Given the political diversity of sociology it may be argued that ‘political
neutrality is central to the corporate organisation of sociology, not because it
secures objectivity, nor because social inquiry can, or should be, value-neutral’
(Holmwood 2007:63, see also J. Turner 2005). While value-freedom may not
be plausible, we should not seek to ascribe common political values to all soci-
ologists as public sociology seems to do.
Such debates were, appropriately, played out publically a year before
Burawoy gave his talk For Public Sociology. In 2003 the ASA balloted its
members on whether it should oppose the Iraq War; 66 per cent voted in
favour of this. Burawoy cites this as indication of the scissors movement
with the increasingly cohesive and left-wing sociology differing from the
rest of American society which, at this point, overwhelmingly supported the
war (Burawoy 2005a:6). However, for Nielsen (2004:1624–5) this showed
all that was wrong with public sociology. Firstly, there was not consensus; a
third of members didn’t support the resolution. Therefore, Burawoy is again
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Public Sociology 191
They feel that the ‘adoption’ of such resolutions by the ASA abusively
associates their name with a political opinion with which they disagree,
represents contemptuous disregard for their minority opinion, and really
aims at suppressing dissent among members under cover of a false una-
nimity. (Nielsen 2004:1624)
Such critics ask: can you not be a sociologist and be pro-Iraq War? And pro-
markets? Or, more importantly, does one have to be pro- or anti-markets to be
a sociologist? Surely you only need to be pro-sociology? Public sociology, by
rejecting political neutrality, has the danger of removing the very possibility
of future sociologists who hold right-wing views (Abbott 2007) and alienate
those who already hold such views. A good example of this is Peter Berger, who
argues that ‘sociology is radical in its debunking analysis but conservative in
its practical implications’ (Berger 2011:176) and demonstrated such a belief
by working for US tobacco companies to covertly research the ‘anti-smoking’
groups, including discovering the profile of the members and their motives
(Berger 2011:169–75). Was Berger’s work a form of ‘organic’ public sociology
despite it emerging from a pro-market position?
While the first group of critics are those who wish to stay clear of public
sociology, the second group are those who embrace it. As Patricia Hill Collins
(2007) puts it, she and many others had long been practising ‘the sociology that
had no name’, doing public sociology without having the word for it. Collins
highlights that, as we saw above, this tended to be especially true of female
and/or black and minority ethnic sociologists who were often driven to public
engagement due to a mix of personal experience and research interests. While
Collins and others (Acker 2005, Katz-Fishman and Scott 2005, Misztal 2009,
Sprague and Laube 2009) see positives in this activity being given a name,
they also have fears. Firstly, it could become ‘yet another fad…that privileged
sociologists can play at just as a cat toys with a mouse’ (Collins 2007:106).
Dominant figures in sociology, likely to be white men, may begin to dip in and
out of public sociology or produce authoritative texts outlining how public
sociology should be done; books will be written and seminars held on public
sociology, but few will actually do it. As mentioned earlier, groups engaged in
organic public sociology are often critical of others seeking to give such advice
(Nyden et al. 2012). Alternatively, the opposite may happen; public sociology is
seen as a ‘good’ thing but largely left to younger scholars – most likely women
and/or black and minority ethnic sociologists – yet to ‘establish’ themselves and
with less job security (Collins 2007). Here, the fact that universities are usually
unwilling to consider public sociology when hiring candidates is an obstacle
192 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
(Stacey 2007). Therefore, naming a sociology which has been done for years,
especially when that naming is done by someone as influential as Burawoy,
could pose future problems.
A third set of critics are united in their belief that Burawoy gives sociology
too much credit; there are two ways in which this is expressed. The first comes
from what Tittle (2004) calls the ‘arrogance’ of public sociology. As we saw,
much of Burawoy’s defence for public sociology concerns our engagement in
the civil sphere which is seen as a space of equal engagement allowing for the
‘collective self-regulation of society’ (Burawoy 2005d:386). Some public soci-
ologists fully embrace this egalitarian principle, arguing that sociology has no
unique access to knowledge (Nyden et al. 2012:13) and that it needs to more
fully embrace the knowledge of ‘lay’ actors (Touraine 2007, Noy 2009) or at
least recognise that such a distinction is not clear cut (Mesny 2009). However,
Burawoy does not share this perspective and, as we have seen, argues that
sociologists have a unique commitment to civil society, seemingly giving them
a special position within this. For Tittle, there is a contradiction here which,
in its claim sociologists are uniquely placed vis-à-vis other citizens, gives pub-
lic sociology an air of arrogance and embraces ‘a form of inequality that in
other contexts Burawoy would probably abhor’ (Tittle 2004:1643). A slightly
friendlier though still critical point comes from Stacey (2007) who argues that
Burawoy’s claim of sociology’s unique role in defending the civil sphere and
humanity is ‘insulting’ to other subjects that may have a similar claim (such as
anthropology, history and social policy), a point echoed by others (Aronwitz
2005). For example, a recent attempt has been made to justify a form of ‘public
criminology’ on the basis of the democratic ideal outlined by Burawoy (Loader
and Sparks 2011).
The fourth group of criticisms argue that being public is much more challeng-
ing than Burawoy makes out. There are multiple reasons for this; for example,
as we have seen throughout this book, to be critical is one thing, and to suggest
alternatives another. The latter inevitably involves practical questions. Both
Mead and Mannheim were critical of liberal democracy, but their practical
alternatives differed greatly; some feminists shared the view that pornography
was negative, but only some held the view it should be banned. Therefore, to be
public is to engage in practical questions. For some, this means that sociology
could not live up to its promise because we do not yet have definite answers to
the questions we ask; we do not know, for example, what exactly causes crime
(Tittle 2004).
This then leads to two possible conclusions. The first is that sociologists
should focus all their efforts on professional sociology, working until we have
clear answers to key questions (Tittle 2004; Boyns and Fletcher 2005; J. Turner
2005). The second position, contrary to an earlier critique, argues that in fact
Burawoy does not acknowledge how political public sociology would need
to be (Aronwitz 2005; Etzoni 2005; Piven 2007; Wallerstein 2007). Partly in
response to earlier critics Burawoy defends public sociology as able to ‘support
Christian Fundamentalism as it can Liberation Sociology or Communitarianism’
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(Burawoy 2005a:8); the fact it is more likely to support left-wing goals simply
reflects the position of individual sociologists in the scissors movement. For
these critics this overlooks the fact that sociology operates in a highly political
environment, whether this be media outlets with views to promote (Ericson
2005), funders who desire certain research studies (Piven 2007) or neoliberal
governments suspicious both of sociology and the welfare state (Urry 2005).
Therefore, to pretend public sociology can adopt different political positions
is wishful thinking; it would have to, following Gouldner, adopt certain moral
positions concerning what ‘democracy’ should be (Ossewaarde 2005; S. Turner
2005). In the view of Barbara Ehrenreich, who straddles the border of sociol-
ogy and journalism, this may require sociologists to become more like journal-
ists (Ehrenreich 2007).
The final criticism suggests that Burawoy exaggerates the public who are
interested in what sociology has to say. Some note that in fact much of sociol-
ogy is already public in the sense its findings are easily available and sociolo-
gists do appear in the media (Ericson 2005) rather ‘the problem is that publics
do not want to read them’ (Scott 2005:408). Therefore, the goal is not simply
to become public, but rather:
The key task for public sociology, then, is to establish the means through
which publics are motivated to take seriously and to engage with its aca-
demic products. This is a slow, incremental process in which people must
be persuaded and enticed into reading sociology and, most importantly,
thinking sociologically. A great deal can be achieved through the public
that we encounter every day – our students – but there is a more difficult
task of building a dialogue with the publics outside the universities. The
advocacy of public sociology is a claim for autonomy combined with a
claim for engagement – and that is its challenge. (Scott 2005:408)
Therefore, echoing Scott, some have encouraged Burawoy and public sociology
to take an even greater account of how important teaching is to the mission of
public sociology (Calhoun 2005, Stacey 2007, Noy 2009).
As mentioned above, this is just a selection of the many critiques offered
of public sociology. However, they reflect some of the key themes which we
have discussed throughout this book. These include the role of political values
in sociology, the problems of inequality, the difficulties of moving from cri-
tique to alternative and the importance of spreading a sociological outlook.
Burawoy has, in multiple spaces, responded to these criticisms (see Burawoy
2005c; d, 2007a; b). His main response has been that they reflect the division
of sociological labour he outlined. Those wishing to pull up the drawbridge
and devote their energies to value-free research and discovering final answers
are defending professional sociology (Burawoy 2007b), while those seeking to
further politicise the discipline are coming from critical sociology (Burawoy
2005d). This for Burawoy demonstrates the vibrancy and variety of sociol-
ogy which he claims to celebrate (Burawoy 2005c). He does acknowledge the
194 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
even with all the obstacles – and there are many – public sociology is
flourishing. It simply does not have a public profile but operates in the
interstices of society in neighbourhoods, in schools, in classrooms, in fac-
tories, in short, wherever sociologists find themselves. The existence of a
plurality of invisible public sociologies gives lie to the sceptics. To give
it more vitality, more influence, more visibility, we need to recognize it.
What better way to recognize it than naming it, and then placing it along-
side and in relation to other sociologies and then introducing incentives.
(Burawoy 2005c:426)
In many ways, this echoes what we have seen in this book. The obstacles in the
way of being public sociologists have always been there and sociologists have
endeavoured to offer their alternatives in different ways, whether by organic
or traditional public sociology. What unites them is that sociology is able to, as
Bauman put it, ‘keep other options alive’ (Bauman 2008:238). We shall return
to this in the ‘Conclusion’ following this chapter.
This chapter has discussed the ways in which sociologists go about offering
alternatives through the lens of Michael Burawoy’s conception of ‘public soci-
ology’. As we have seen, Burawoy imagines a fourfold sociological division of
labour among professional, policy, critical and public sociologies. While other
forms have been emphasised at certain times, in the current neoliberal era it is
public sociology, with its defence of a participatory and democratic civil sphere,
which sociology should be engaged in. This can be practised in two ways: a top-
down traditional public sociology which involves writing for a mass audience
and appearing in the media and a bottom-up organic public sociology where
sociologists work directly with social movements and community groups. For
Burawoy it is the latter which is increasingly prominent and important in the
current day. We saw that his conception of public sociology is one which has
been shared by many of the sociologists discussed in this book. Furthermore,
we saw that critics have emphasised various problems with public sociology,
including the political values of sociology and sociologists, who would do it,
practical problems with doing it and whether there is an audience for sociologi-
cal findings. These criticisms, for Burawoy, reflect the division of sociological
labour and the continued promise of public sociology.
Such ideas of public sociology play out in the case of Pierre Bourdieu. Before
his death in 2002 Bourdieu had attained the position of a noted public intel-
lectual in his native France and, in particular, was involved in anti-globalization
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Public Sociology 195
politics (Bourdieu 1998, 2003). Bourdieu’s early, pre-1990s, career had been
spent in the field of professional sociology with texts such as Outline of the The-
ory of Practice (1977) and Distinction (1984) bearing all the marks of this field.
However, Bourdieu’s later work included both traditional and organic public
sociology. On the traditional side, we have Weight of the World (Bourdieu et al.
1999), a collection of interviews with everyday people suffering from social ills,
as well as Acts of Resistance (1998) and Firing Back (2003), both of which are
collections of short, polemical, pieces on contemporary political issues.
Acts of Resistance and Firing Back also indicate Bourdieu’s organic public
sociology since they are made up partly of transcripts from speeches at protests,
strikes or occupations, reflecting his involvement with a variety of political
groupings. Furthermore, he made an increasing number of media appear-
ances to protest the increasingly neoliberal nature of the French state. His
fame as a public intellectual increased to the extent that theatre groups began
to perform some of the stories contained in Weight of the World (see Swartz
2003:799–814).
This shift in Bourdieu’s work attracted major comment since Bourdieu’s ear-
lier writings had been critical of political activism on the part of intellectuals
and had favoured building up sociology as a distinct scientific discipline (Swartz
2003:793). However, as noted by others (Schinkel 2003, Poupeau and Disce-
polo 2008) Bourdieu had always written on political matters; what changed in
the 1990s was the form and frequency of that writing and activity. To use the
language of this chapter, while Bourdieu consistently wrote on politics, in this
period he made the shift from professional to public sociology.
Why did Bourdieu make this shift? While due to a multitude of factors –
including Bourdieu’s and sociology’s improved position in France – a major
factor was the emergence of neoliberalism and what Bourdieu saw as the
unwillingness of the French Socialist Party to combat it. Bourdieu spoke of
neoliberalism as a theory based upon ‘pure mathematical fiction’ which is best
conceived as ‘a political programme of action’ in which ‘an immense politi-
cal operation is being pursued … aimed at creating the conditions for realis-
ing and operating of the “theory”; a programme of methodical destruction of
collectivities’ (Bourdieu 1998:94–6). As this indicates, Bourdieu conceived of
neoliberalism as a project to destroy the gains of the welfare state or, as he also
put it, as a ‘neo-conservative revolution’ in which ‘a kind of radical capital-
ism…with no restraint or disguise, but rationalised and driven to the limit of
its economic efficiency by the introduction of new forms of domination’ was
becoming dominant (Bourdieu 2008:288). In pursuing this project a collection
of actors, including intellectuals, have succeeded in presenting neoliberalism as
an inevitability:
we hear it said, all day long – and this is what gives the dominant dis-
course its strength – that there is nothing to put forward in opposition to
the neo-liberal view … that there is no alternative. (Bourdieu 1998:29)
196 Social Theory for alTernaTive SocieTieS
To achieve this, the project of neoliberalism had been presented as the empirical
reality of ‘globalization’ which:
As I see it, the scholar has no choice today: if he is convinced that there
is a correlation between neoliberal policies and crime rates, all the sins of
what Durkheim would have called anomie, how can he avoid saying so?
It is not just that there is nothing to reproach him for in this, he should
even be congratulated. (Bourdieu 2008:381)
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Public Sociology 197
Here Bauman draws a link between ‘vita contemplativa’ (the action all sociolo-
gists do in contemplating the social world) and ‘vita activa’ (acting in that social
world publically). Given that sociologists are interested in shared understand-
ings and the condition of that social world, such interventions are somewhat
inevitable. Therefore, Bourdieu reflects the tradition outlined in this book of
sociologists intervening actively and publically. However, this does not mean,
as also shown in this book, that we can proclaim there is a correct or universal
political position for sociologists to take or even that all individual sociologists
will take up such public activity. This will instead be shaped by factors includ-
ing their personal political beliefs, position and relation to institutions such as
the state.
It is this final point which we shall consider further in the ‘Conclusion’. Hav-
ing traced our history of alternatives in sociology, and considered the role of
sociologists in offering them, we could be said to have come full circle. Indeed,
many have argued Burawoy’s arguments reflect the earlier arguments between
Weber and those who followed him, such as Becker and Gouldner (Ossewaarde
2005, Scott 2005). Therefore, the question remaining from our discussion is,
what can we learn about the nature of sociology and its alternatives from the
ideas outlined in this book?
Conclusion: Sociology and
Alternatives
This book has discussed three questions: (1) should sociology offer alternatives?
(2) what alternatives has sociology offered? (3) how has/should sociology offer
alternatives? As we have seen, these are interlinked. While in Chapter 1 we dis-
cussed the value-freedom debates in response to the first question, the concern
for what sociology is ‘for’ – including whether it should offer alternatives –
has been a common concern. Furthermore, during the discussion of alterna-
tives, how they should be offered was never far from the surface, as in the
discussions in chapters covering Du Bois and James concerning the links of
academia and activism. Indeed, the tripartite definition of sociological alterna-
tives provided in the ‘Introduction’ – a critique, an alternative and a justification
for how the alternative solves the critique – has often necessitated this.
To further explore the key elements of sociological alternatives, this conclu-
sion will consider seven themes which could be found throughout this book
and the history of social theory it has traced.
Many of the critiques in this book take inequality as their focus. This reflects a
common idea of sociology being a discipline especially concerned with inequal-
ity, most notably class. Indeed, it has been claimed that ‘sociology has only
one independent variable: class’ (Stinchcombe quoted in Wright 1979:3). We
may question the contemporary relevance of this claim, indicated by the fact
that while there were alternatives which emphasised economic equality, others
emphasised differing forms of equality.
In the first category here we can locate Durkheim, for whom economic ine-
quality was one of the key elements of his critique. This led him to claim that
inheritance was a pathological social fact and ‘contrary to the spirit of individu-
alism’ (Durkheim 1992:217). However, for others it was more complicated.
While class was a key factor in the construction of Marx’s alternative this was
not necessarily a push for greater equality – as the ‘right to inequality’ in the
first stage of communism indicated. Meanwhile, while Lefebvre and Marcuse
shared the Marxist vision of a classless society they differed on the role of the
working class in constructing such an alternative. Furthermore, for Mannheim
it was not inequality which was the problem but rather the insufficient mecha-
nisms for creating a ‘new ruling class’ and stable middle class.
We have also seen a focus on different forms of inequality, whether these be
of race (Du Bois), gender (Dworkin) or lifestyles (Giddens). Therefore, while
198
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ConClusion: soCiology and alternatives 199
the sociological concern with inequality has been indicated by the alternatives
offered in this book, it would be inaccurate to say simply that sociological alter-
natives universally hope to remove inequality and construct a classless society.
There has been a tension throughout this book concerning the willingness of
theorists to clearly state their alternative and, in the most extreme form, draft
a blueprint. This began with our first alternative and Marx’s claim that since
the proletariat will create communism he would not provide ‘recipes for the
cook-shops of the future’ (Marx 1996a:17). Those inspired by Marx, notably
200 soCial theory for alternative soCieties
Lefebvre and Marcuse, shared this view though for slightly different reasons.
As we also saw, for some readings of utopianism a blueprint was unneces-
sary or even dangerous, creating what Sargisson (2012) termed the ‘dangerous
fools’ who claim to have all the answers. Instead utopias are orientation points
used for the education of desire and conceiving of ultimate goals (Levitas) or
can be found by extrapolating from already existing practices (Wright). Finally,
a blueprint was largely unnecessary for Mead since he spent his time attempt-
ing to create his alternative via everyday forms of democracy.
However, we also found some dedicated blueprint constructors. Dworkin
and MacKinnon wrote their policy into a law which, as we saw, had vary-
ing forms of success in North America. Giddens, given his link to the Labour
Party, also had to be clear on what policies could be enacted and achieved via
his Third Way. While Durkheim, Du Bois, James and others provided at least
partial blueprints, perhaps the prime constructor of maps for the future was
Mannheim who devoted most of Parts II and III (roughly 200 pages) of his
Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning to his blueprint.
Why do these differences exist? As indicated above, one reason could be who
is seen as the agent of change. When a particular group, whether this is the
proletariat or the new subject, is seen to create the new society then responsi-
bility for constructing an alternative shifts to them. A more telling explanation
concerns the place of intellectuals. Those with the most detailed blueprints also
tended to be those who suggested that intellectuals as a group had a key role to
play in the construction of alternatives. Again, Mannheim is the best example
of this with his conception of the new ruling class as effectively the ‘sociologist
king’, but there are other examples. Giddens argued that, as an ‘intellectual in
politics’, his main goal was to translate sociological ideas into political prac-
tice. Durkheim also saw sociologists as having a ‘constant preoccupation’ with
‘practical questions’ which led him to his advocacy of the corporations (Dur-
kheim 1982:160).
While these positions created the space for developing blueprints, others
provided less space. Engels warned against the ‘individual man of genius’, the
utopian intellectual seen to have all the answers who became a potential dic-
tator (Engels 1984:112), a concern also shared by Weber who raised such a
claim against Marx and Engels (Weber 1918). Also, Mead saw the develop-
ment of the ‘genius’ in all as a key part of his alternative and was critical of
what he termed ‘the academic attitude of creating problems for Doctor’s theses’
which often didn’t help solve social problems (Mead 1938:326) and led him to
be critical of Marxism (Mead 1899b). Therefore, the willingness to construct
blueprints more often than not reflects the role the writer imagines sociologists
to play. Interestingly, despite Marx’s unwillingness it has often been a supposed
Marxist tendency towards blueprint construction which others have defined
themselves against.
Historically, and beyond sociology, intellectuals have not always had a posi-
tive relationship with publics. The claim for intellectuals having the interests
of the exploited at heart has often manifested itself as a commendation of the
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ConClusion: soCiology and alternatives 201
ignorant ‘masses’ in need of help (Carey 1992). The involvement of social scien-
tists in regimes such as Nazism (Ingrao 2013), apartheid South Africa (Connell
2007:99) and, especially in Britain, empire (Steinmetz 2013) is another reason
to think carefully about whether such a relationship is necessarily positive.
Tom Bottomore once claimed ‘that a close connection exists between sociology
and socialism is evident’ (Bottomore 1984:1). On the basis of this book there
is mixed evidence for such a statement. In support we have the fact that many
alternatives have claimed socialism/communism as their end goal (Marx and
202 soCial theory for alternative soCieties
Engels, late Du Bois, Lefebvre, Marcuse, James) or, in the case of Durkheim
(Gane 1984) and Mead (Shalin 1988), have been proclaimed as socialist by
others. Furthermore, those seeking to imagine sociology as utopian have sug-
gested links to socialism, whether this is Levitas’ claim that it allows for dignity
and grace (Levitas 2013:217) or Wright’s idea of using socialism as a compass
to judge the value of alternatives (Wright 2006). Finally, as we saw in the previ-
ous chapter, Burawoy makes explicit links to the idea of public sociology, with
its critique of the market and the state, as a socialist endeavour.
So, initially, there seems strong evidence for the claim of a link between
sociology and socialism. However, it is also notable how often socialism has
been rejected. Weber’s claim for value-freedom was especially strong when dis-
cussing the tendency for intellectuals to become ‘disciples’ of the ‘crusading
leader and faith’ of socialism (Weber 1921:125). For Weber, such intellectuals
were ‘emotionally unfit for everyday life or averse to it and its demands, and
who therefore hunger and thirst after the great revolutionary miracle’ (Weber
1918:298). Furthermore, Mead, Mannheim, Giddens and Beck created alter-
natives in at least partial opposition to socialism, while this barely figured in
the debates on pornography (beyond the Marxist critics). Finally, as already
discussed, Burawoy was heavily criticised for the socialist sympathies of public
sociology, specifically in the claim that this marginalises the intellectual and
political plurality of sociology.
Sociology has never been purely socialist with liberal (Collini 1979) and
conservative (Strasser 1976) trends also present. Indeed, it is possible to find
all these trends in the legacy of one theorist. For example, while this book
presented Durkheim’s alternative as broadly socialist, some have claimed that
his sociology demonstrates far-right and authoritarian tendencies (see Desan
and Heilbron 2015 for an overview of this debate). Furthermore, national
context is significant in the political positioning in sociology. To provide one
comparison, while Canadian sociology has a long-term left-wing tendency
partly reflecting the impetus of movements of the 1960s which so inspired
Marcuse in sociology’s institutional birth (McLaughlin 2005), Irish sociol-
ogy was long dominated by the Catholic church and therefore limited in its
ability to discuss left-wing, especially Marxist, writings (Fanning and Hess
2015). Of course, claiming an inherent or organic link between sociology and
socialism can also marginalise the fact that countries under Soviet control had
a Marxist–Leninist line imposed on their sociological practice (Mucha and
Keen 2010:132–3).
Perhaps a better way of looking at this is to turn to another of Bauman’s
concepts – that of socialism as a ‘counter-culture’ to capitalism (Bauman
1976b). Namely, wherever capitalism exists then socialism will exist, at least
as an idea, as its opposite. This would explain why many of the alternatives
discussed here – all of which were written in the context of a capitalist society
of some form – have utilised a form of socialism. It would also help explain
why the non-socialist alternatives of Mannheim, Giddens and Beck have had
to draw a distinction between their ideas and socialism. This was done either
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ConClusion: soCiology and alternatives 203
who populate public sociology’s (forgotten) past, such as Jane Addams, Emily
Greene Balch, G.D.H. Cole, Clara Cahill Park, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse,
Patrick Geddes, Selma James, Pierre Bourdieu, Viola Klein and George Herbert
Mead alongside the often-invoked names of Durkheim and Du Bois.
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ConClusion: soCiology and alternatives 205
Sociology may help, as Bauman once put it, to ‘keep other options alive’
(Bauman 2008:238) without necessarily being for one of those options or even
seeing them as more enticing than the status quo. Perhaps, when we face the
question of what sociology is for, the best answer is that ‘sociology is passionate
about the social’; it argues that ‘social life is awesome, amazing and often hor-
rendous, sometimes to be celebrated and sometimes to lead to disenchantment’
(Plummer 2010:206). It is this amazement with social life, its ups, its downs, its
forms of oppression and potential liberation which has led many sociologists,
like those discussed in this book, to seek out a different world: a sociological
alternative.
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Index
Acker, Joan 124–5, 188, 191 on sociology 155
activism 14, 64–5, 68–70, 91, 97, 114, subpolitics 157
116, 124, 135, 188–189, 195, 198 Becker, Howard 16–18, 19, 21, 22, 197,
Addams, Jane 14, 85, 86, 89, 121, 181, 204
182, 204 Benston, Margaret 125–6
Adorno, Theodor 22, 100 Berger, Peter 15, 21, 191, 204
alienation 26–7, 30, 36–7, 42, 83, Bhambra, Gurminder 2, 62
103–6, 138, 165 black radical tradition 62, 116, 189
see also Lefebvre, Henri; Marx, Blair, Tony 147, 150, 169
Karl Bloch, Ernst 164, 168
American Sociological Association Bottomore, Tom 201
(ASA) 181, 190–1 Bourdieu, Pierre 3
Avineri, Shlomo 31, 33, 34, 40 on Giddens 150
public sociology 194–7, 203, 204
Back, Les 21, 180, 204 Boyle, Karen 132, 133, 135
basic income 129–30, 173–8 Brown, Wendy 123
criticisms of 175–8 Burawoy, Michael 180–6
as socialist 175, 177 forms of sociology 183–4
as sociological alternative 173 public sociology, defence of 193–4
see also Levitas, Ruth; Wright, Erik public sociology, definition of 182
Olin sociological division of labour 184
Bauman, Zygmunt 101, 166, 173, 194, waves of sociology 181–2
205
on Bourdieu 197 capitalism 2, 9, 25–30, 36, 42, 44, 50,
critical sociology 22, 204 70–1, 73, 76–7, 83, 95, 100, 102–4,
legislators/interpreters distinction 6, 109, 110–16, 119, 126–7, 129, 148,
98–9, 182, 201, 203 154, 164, 166, 171, 174, 175, 177,
in Poland 79 195, 202
on socialism 164, 202–3 advertising 101, 104, 112, 158
utopianism 164, 166 public/private divide and 124–5, 129
Beck, Ulrich 151–61 wastefulness of 28–9, 42–3, 101, 158
alternative 156–60 Chicago 80, 84, 86, 188
biography 151–2 Chicago School 65, 80
civil labour 159 civil society 34, 159, 183, 188, 190,
class 153, 155–6 192, 196
cosmopolitan states 157–8, 199 civil war (American) 70–2
cosmopolitanism 154, 160, 201 class 3–4, 24–5, 30, 36, 40, 50–1, 65–6,
critique 155–6 68, 71–2, 74, 95–6, 100, 102, 105,
ecology 152–3, 158 127, 142, 144, 147, 153, 155–6, 170,
European Union 157–160 198–9
individualization 142, 153, 154 see also working class
risk society 152–3 Cole, G.D.H. 1–2, 32, 39, 173, 177, 204
227
228 Index
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Index 229
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Index 231
normativity 10, 14, 16, 21, 43, 98, 145, socialism 9, 11, 32, 35, 39, 44, 61, 76–7,
156, 178–9, 203, 204 83, 100 104, 114, 115, 117, 123,
definition of 7–8 127, 142, 146, 147, 171, 177, 195
as ‘counter-culture’ 201–3
Oakley, Ann 128, 129 guild socialism 5, 61
Owen, Robert 32, 203 and public sociology 190
and sociology 4, 201–3, 204
Park, Robert 14, 65 utopian 32, 35, 84, 164, 167, 170,
Paris Commune 31, 38–41, 106, 174
186 see also individual names, communism,
participatory city planning 172 USSR/Soviet Russia
Pateman, Carole 79, 175 sociological alternatives 3–6
patriarchy 123, 127–8, 130, 134, 136, choice of theorists 5–6
138–40, 199 definition of 3–4
definition of 122 sociology 201–5
Phipps, Alison 132, 138 conservative forms of 9, 21–2, 44,
Plummer, Ken 205 183, 191, 202
pornography 111, 192, 202 democracy, supposed link to 19, 182,
critique of 130–6 183, 204
defence of 136–8 normative goals 204–5
postcolonialism 2, 184 socialist forms of 201–2
public sociology 62, 69, 180–97 utopian 166–8, 170–2
critique of 189–94 value-free 8–20, 97, 163, 190, 193,
definition of 180, 183, 184 202
history of 181, 186–9, 203–4 see also American Sociological Associa-
Marxism 190, 202 tion (ASA), critical sociology, Irish
organic 185–6, 188–9 sociology public sociology, Sociolo-
traditional 184–5, 186–8 gists for Women in Society (SWS)
see also individual names Sociologists for Women in Society
(SWS) 188–9
race 63–8, 77–8, 93, 184, 190 Standing, Guy 173, 178
revolution 3, 25, 29–31, 41, 88, 95, state 34, 36, 41, 48, 49, 52–3, 55, 82–3,
106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 119–20, 98–9, 104, 106–7, 123, 127, 137,
123, 195 141, 145, 148, 150, 152, 155, 157,
Rowbotham, Shelia 123, 188 160, 171, 177, 182, 196, 201
see also welfare state
Said, Edward 151 Strossen, Nadine 136–8
Sargisson, Lucy 2, 122, 165, 166, 168, Sweden 79, 182
200
Saunders, Peter 9, 165, 183 teaching 1, 10, 12–14, 15, 58–60, 62,
Sayer, Andrew 8, 21 86, 109, 185–6, 193, 204
Segal, Lynne 128, 138, 139 Third Way see Giddens, A.,
self (social) see Mead, George Herbert Mannheim, K.
sexuality 108, 111, 132, 133, 135,
136–7, 139, 169 UK 18, 31, 33, 123, 125, 133, 142,
as critique of capitalism 111, 138 147, 150–1, 163, 174, 176
Sklair, Leslie 141 universal class 30, 39, 77, 113
Smith, Dorothy 19–20, 151, 184 USA 14, 15, 62, 64–5, 67–8, 70–2, 80,
Social Democratic Party (SPD), Ger- 111, 136, 186, 190, 200
man 35, 80, 84 USSR/Soviet Russia 41, 70, 73, 100,
social settlements 85 104, 106, 114, 164, 171
social theory 1–6 utopia 162–79
definitions of 2 Marxism 3, 162, 163, 167, 170–1
theory-baiting 6 sociology 163–4, 166–8, 170–2
turn-taking 6, 44 see also individual names
232 Index
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